Read Guess Who's Coming to Die? Online
Authors: Patricia Sprinkle
Guess Who's Coming to Die? (7 page)
If looks could wither a person, he’d have withered under mine like a roach under pesticide. He wouldn’t have been asking if his tactics were acceptable if he’d had a batch of welfare mothers in that room. He wouldn’t have been letting them go home, either.
“I don’t have a ride,” Wilma whimpered. “I came with Willena.”
MayBelle took her arm. “Come on. I’ll drive you home. Will Linette and Lincoln be back yet?” When Wilma shook her head, MayBelle told the rest of us, “I’ll stay until they get there.”
Folks with raincoats had left them spread on chairs out in the tiled hall, to save the meeting room carpet. I helped Gusta put on a practical gray all-weather coat. Meriwether had a floral raincoat with a matching umbrella. Rachel donned a large black cape that made her look like Zorro. Sadie Lowe had a transparent raincoat that showed off her outfit.
“Let me get on my rain boots,” Wilma insisted to nobody in particular. “I don’t want these shoes to get ruined.” Not one soul who knew her was surprised that Wilma was worrying about yellow shoes while her cousin lay dead. She took a pair of clear plastic shoes that fit over other shoes from a large cloth carryall and sat to pull them on. They were still wet and muddy from carrying in refreshments before the meeting. She then put on a soft yellow raincoat, opened an umbrella patterned after an impressionist painting, and picked up the bulky carryall.
That whole time Maybelle was prowling up and down the hall demanding, “What the hell happened to my raincoat? Has anybody seen it? It’s rust brown, and I left it right there.” She pointed to an empty chair.
A murmur of denial filled the hall.
I sidled over to Charlie and murmured, “Rust brown would conceal bloodstains real well, don’t you think? I hope you all will look good for that coat.”
He frowned, but called to one of the deputies, “Thad, would you take a description of her coat, in case we come across it?”
I wasn’t through. “If she was throwing up like that, maybe somebody gave her poison or something.”
He looked down his nose. “The woman was obviously stabbed, Judge. You saw her yourself. You stick to your bench and leave the detecting to me.”
I wanted to say,
I would, if you’d do any detecting
, but he was already moving away, and I had two more things to say. “Shouldn’t we all get tested for bloodstains and stick around until you take fingerprints from the ladies’ room? And don’t you want to check for footprints in the hall before we tramp all over it?”
I would, if you’d do any detecting
, but he was already moving away, and I had two more things to say. “Shouldn’t we all get tested for bloodstains and stick around until you take fingerprints from the ladies’ room? And don’t you want to check for footprints in the hall before we tramp all over it?”
He waved my first suggestion aside like a polecat batting flies. “No need to inconvenience anybody, Judge,” he assured me. I was about to point out that murder is generally inconvenient when he at least paid attention to the last thing I said. He raised his voice and called, “If you would, please go down the back hall here and leave the building by the far side hall, so you don’t mess up any possible footprints up near the ladies’ room.”
That was the first time I ever heard a police chief worry about inconveniencing a possible murderer. But what the heck? If he was willing to let us go, who was I to argue?
I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. As I hefted my pocketbook over one shoulder, he held up one hand. “Oh, Judge? I’d appreciate it if you and Miss Cindy would stay behind for a minute.”
6
All he wanted was to embarrass us in front of the others.
He took us back into the Wainwright Meeting Room and took me over my story again. What could I tell him except to repeat what I had already said: that I’d gone to the bathroom and found Willena as soon as I opened the door?
I didn’t bother to add that since I had never gotten to use the bathroom, I was in serious discomfort by now. The office of judge requires a certain bit of decorum. Still, I hoped he’d finish with us soon and let us go.
Instead, he turned to Cindy and started questioning her again. “Don’t you think it’s a little odd for somebody to stand for thirty minutes out in the rain trying to call kids?”
“I had an umbrella,” she repeated. “If you’ll go check, you’ll see it’s sopping wet. My daughter was on the phone—she’s thirteen—and I couldn’t get through for a while.”
“Don’t you folks have call waiting?”
“Yes, but she didn’t pick up.”
I could have told him that when Cindy is trying to reach her children when they’re at home alone, a hurricane or tornado wouldn’t deter her, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. The sooner they finished, the sooner we could go.
As Robert Burns once remarked, however, the best-laid plans of mice and men go “aft agley.” A deputy foiled our escape by coming in to announce, “We found a raincoat, Chief, spattered with something that looks like blood.”
Chief Muggins turned with the eagerness of a bantam rooster eyeing dinner. “Where was it?”
“In a trash can at the back of the building, balled up and shoved in. It’s a kind of brown-red color, so it’s hard to tell what has spattered it.”
Cindy caught a quick, short breath.
Chief Muggins heard and whirled in our direction. “One of yours?”
I shook my head. “Neither of us brought a raincoat. Cindy brought an umbrella and came into our garage to get me, so I didn’t think to bring anything. But I’d bet that’s the one MayBelle was asking about before she left. Sounds like hers.”
“Could you identify it?” Chief Muggins asked us.
I hesitated, but Cindy nodded. “I think so.”
“Bring it in,” he commanded the deputy.
The deputy returned carrying the coat in gloved hands. It was a gory sight, the front covered with spatters and one wide stream of dark brown.
I’ve seen gruesome things in my day, but they always make me queasy. I swallowed hard. Cindy turned green. “Yeah, that’s hers.” She clutched her mouth and headed for the kitchen. We heard her being violently ill, then water running in the sink.
“Don’t mess up evidence,” the chief shouted in to her.
“You were the one who insisted she look at the coat,” I reminded him. “Willena was a friend of hers.”
As soon as I’d said it, a chill rose from my feet toward my heart. Cindy and Willena were in a lot of clubs and organizations together, but they were anything but friends.
Willena had disliked Cindy ever since Cindy joined our local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter. Willena and Wilma, as chapter members with the most confirmed ancestors who had fought in the Revolution, had pretty much run things their way until then, but Cindy’s family had been active in the DAR for generations, and she had started attending DAR meetings and conventions with her mother and grandmother before she could walk. When Willena asked the Hopemore chapter to provide funds for a memorial marker and stone for her maternal many-times-great-grandfather to replace a stone that had been vandalized, Cindy asked for verification that he had fought in the Revolution. Willena brushed that off, pointing out that while there was some doubt that he had actually fought, he had lived in Georgia during that period and supported the cause of freedom. Cindy then reminded her that DAR chapter funds can be used only for markers on the graves of actual Revolutionary soldiers.
She wasn’t casting aspersions on Willena’s membership. Willena had plenty of qualifying ancestors. Nevertheless, Willena got furious. Especially when they checked the bylaws and she was forced to admit that Cindy was right. Ever since then, Willena had smiled and said sweet things to Cindy in public, but she carried daggers behind her eyes and fought Cindy tooth and nail over points that would never have mattered to anybody else.
Tonight, after Grover had given his presentation and Nancy had given the treasurer’s report, Cindy got a puzzled wrinkle between her brows. “Why do we have so much money in the treasury? Didn’t we vote last month to spend four thousand dollars?”
Gusta had leaned over to me and said in what I guess she thought was an inaudible murmur, “We voted to buy stock in the insurance company Walker works for. Good buy, too. It’s gone up two dollars a share this month.”
I knew that. I own some, not only because it shows confidence in our son to own stock in the company he represents, but because insurance companies these days are run largely for the benefit of shareholders instead of the insured, so I figure that owning stock is the only way to recoup some of my overpriced premiums.
After Gusta spoke, the room had grown still. Nancy looked toward Willena, and Willena stood behind the table watching her hands fiddle with her pen. Finally she looked up with an apologetic little smile that was about as sincere as a car salesman’s handshake. “I told Nancy to hold off on that purchase until we could discuss it further. We have never had a policy about investing in companies for which our members or their husbands work, but I think we ought to. We don’t want to get into the problem of conflict of interest.”
I had taken a quick mental poll. Gusta, Willena, Wilma, Rachel, and Sadie Lowe were not married. Gusta, Willena, Wilma, and Sadie Lowe were not employed. Rachel was a lawyer, as was Meriwether’s husband. Meriwether, MayBelle, Nancy’s husband, and I all owned businesses, but they were privately held, so none of them had stock for sale. Cindy was the only person there whose husband worked for a company that traded on the stock exchange.
Cindy must have been doing the same calculations I was, because she objected, “You’ve bought stock over the years in DuBose Trucking, Wainwright Textile Mills, and Kenan Cotton Factors. Has this ever been an issue before?” Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks pink. She was no longer addressing Willena but the whole group, a new member asking to know the group’s history. Most of the members were already shaking their heads.
That was when we reached the place where the magnolias met the manure. Willena waved one hand to dismiss Cindy’s objection. “Of course not, honey, but Gusta, Wilma, and I don’t any of us
work
for those companies. Neither did Pooh.”
work
for those companies. Neither did Pooh.”
It was the first time I ever heard
work
sound like a four-letter word.
work
sound like a four-letter word.
“If we had invested four thousand dollars in Walker’s company last month, as we voted, we’d be a good bit richer now,” Gusta snapped. That was a typical Gusta exaggeration. Four thousand dollars invested in that particular stock a month ago would be worth forty-two hundred and ninety by now. Even if Gusta held twenty-five percent of the total investment (the most permitted by the bylaws), she would have made around seventy dollars. Still, to Gusta, any money she could have earned and didn’t was a fortune lost.
Willena shrugged. “I know we lost a little money, Miss Gusta, but that’s how the market is. We win some and we lose some. I feel we need to have a discussion on this matter after Wilma takes the helm, when I can speak freely.”
Cindy didn’t say a word, but she breathed heavily beside me and her eyes glistened with tears. If looks could kill, Willena would have lain dead on the floor.
Now she rejoined Chief Muggins and me, pale but composed. With the chief’s permission we headed to her silver Lexus SUV. The only other car in the parking lot, except for police vehicles, was Willena’s white Jaguar convertible. I wondered who would come to take it home.
When we got out on the front porch, I steered Cindy over to the far side, where it was dark. “Do you see any cigarette butts?” She peered at the porch floor, which was littered with a few dead leaves.
“Not a one. I never saw Sadie Lowe, either, or smelled smoke when I came in. But why should she lie?”
“Maybe she dropped them off the edge.” I drew her in that direction by the elbow. We peered down into streaming darkness but didn’t see a single butt. I gave the door a worried look. “I hope the chief will think to check for them.” Charlie wasn’t known for his thoroughness in investigating statements.
“Leave it alone, Mac,” Cindy advised. “You know Pop doesn’t like you getting involved in things like this. Chief Muggins can find out what happened to Willena.” She gave a short little laugh. “And if he doesn’t, do we really care?”
She had a point. I was tired, I had enough on my plate already, and I didn’t know Willena Kenan well enough to have any of the insider knowledge that in the past had helped me find a solution to a case. Furthermore, while I firmly believe in justice for all persons, I hadn’t liked Willena enough to expend much energy in doing Charlie’s job for him.
With relief, I realized that this time there wasn’t a single reason for me to do what my boys call “meddling in murder.”
“It’s all Charlie’s,” I said cheerfully, following Cindy out into the rain.
We shared her umbrella as we wended our way through the parking lot. It wasn’t a great distance to her SUV, but since she is five-eight to my five-two, I got pretty damp. Especially since, on the way, she fumbled and fumbled in her purse, turning the umbrella this way and that until it occasionally dumped rain down my neck or on my shoulder. Although the air was warm, the rain had fallen from a great height and was chilly. I shivered and looked forward to getting into the car.
“I can’t find my keys,” she confessed when we stood dripping beside the big vehicle. She peered down at our feet. “You don’t see them, do you?”
Siamese twins joined at the umbrella handle, we circled her car. No keys gleamed on the wet gravel. She gave a huff of disgust. “I must have dropped them somewhere inside. Here, you keep the umbrella, and I’ll dash—”
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