Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man? (24 page)

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Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

BOOK: Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man?
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“I’d never have thought Fayette could be so mean!” I remembered Hiram Blaine saying something like that.
Otis nodded soberly. “He could be a hard man at times.” Then he sighed. “To tell the truth, though, I think his grief was so big right then he didn’t want to share her with anything or anybody. And you know Miss Winifred and babies. If she’d had a baby around here, the rest of us could have packed our bags and left. She’d never have noticed.”
I handed him the letter. “Put it back in the box in her Cozy when she’s asleep. Did you ever hear from the girl?”
He shook his head. “Mr. Fayette tol’ me, ‘Just give her time, she’ll be writin’ for money soon enough.’ But we kep’ waitin’ and waitin’, and that letter never came.”
Our church is around the square from Pooh’s. I stopped by on my way back to the store and sat in the chapel alone. Soft light streamed through creamy stained-glass windows. The small room was dim, cool, and very quiet. I wasn’t so much praying as feeling the presence of God and admitting that no matter what I was bearing right then, there were others who were bearing things I never could. Was it Socrates who said if they put all the troubles in the world in one big pile and told us to pick some, we’d choose our own?
One by one I pictured my grandchildren, and gave thanks for them. What if I had never seen their dear faces, heard their baby laughs? No wonder Pooh’s mind had finally gone. I was surprised it stuck around as long as it did.
I took a minute to pray for Pooh, that somebody would take care of her. “But not me,” I added in a whisper. “You know I’ve got my hands full with Joe Riddley right now.”
I prayed for Darren, and that the real murderer would be found.
I ambled back toward the store, thinking about Zach, Darren, and Pooh. Oh, if Joe Riddley were only well and could talk to me! I was so busy thinking I ran smack into Kelly Keane.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her. “My head was somewhere else.”
“Don’t apologize. I’ve been wanting to see you.” Her eyes were anxious behind her glasses. “Are they going to send Darren to jail?”
“I hope not, honey. Sure he went down to my house Saturday morning, but he had a good reason for being there, and there’s no evidence yet to connect him to the murder.”
“I feel so bad about saying I saw him.” She nibbled one thumbnail.
“You did what you had to. And there were other witnesses. Besides, he isn’t arrested yet. So far the sheriff’s just asking him questions.”
She shifted her shoulder bag from one shoulder to the other as if shifting her troubles. “I’d hate for him to suffer because of me.”
I patted her arm. “Don’t worry yet. Oh, and thanks for the party article.”
I hadn’t gone half a block when I heard somebody else call, “Judge Yarbrough?” I turned and saw Alice Fulton jogging toward me. Sweat beaded her upper lip, but otherwise she looked fresh and a lot livelier than usual. “I got the car put in my name,” she greeted me, jogging in place.
“Good. That will save us sending you to jail,” I joked.
She jogged slower, then stopped. “May I ask you something? Something real important? I don’t know who else to ask.”
I expected it to be something to do with how many hours she worked, or benefits. I never expected her to blurt, “There used to be a gun in my room, and it’s gone.” I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because she put three fingers over her mouth like she was sorry she’d said anything, and backed away. “It may not be important.”
“It could be real important. Whose gun was it, and what was it doing in your room?”
“I don’t know whose it was. It was small and silver, and it was in a shoebox on the shelf in my closet. I found it when I put my suitcase up there. The suitcase wouldn’t go all the way to the back, so I climbed up on a chair to see why. That’s when I saw the box. I—maybe I shouldn’t have opened it, but I did, and all that was in it was a gun.”
“Was it loaded?”
She hitched up her shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about guns, so I wouldn’t know how to tell, except by shooting it. I didn’t even pick it up. I didn’t want it to go off accidentally or anything.”
“Did you ask Gusta about it?”
“No, ma’am—I thought about it, but then I decided maybe that’s where they kept it and she might not have wanted me poking around.”
“Florine should have cleaned off the shelf before they put you in that room.”
“She’s not very tall, and the gun was back in the far corner of a real deep shelf.”
“When did you notice it was gone?”
“Last night. I wanted to get down some sweaters I’d left in my suitcase, and when I got up on a chair to get the suitcase, I saw the box was gone. Do you think I ought to tell Mrs. Wainwright?”
“You need to tell the sheriff. They are looking for a small gun that killed Hiram Blaine.”
She took a step back and covered her whole mouth with her hand. “Oh, no.”
“I’m afraid so. Who has been in that room besides you?”
She hesitated.
“Florine, to clean,” I prompted. “Anybody else?” When she didn’t speak, I guessed. “Was Darren ever up there?”
I couldn’t imagine how he could have been, given their short acquaintance and Gusta’s gimlet eyes, but she nodded and looked down like a confessing child. “He came by Monday evening to go play miniature golf. Mrs. Wainwright was at a meeting and Florine had gone to see her sister, so when he said what a neat house it was, I showed him around.”
“But he wasn’t alone in your room, was he?”
“No more than five minutes, while I went to the bathroom to brush my hair and put on lipstick.”
“I don’t think he could have found that gun in five minutes.” Her dark eyes were full of misery. “I’d told him I’d found it, the afternoon before. I wanted to know if it could go off accidentally, and I didn’t know who else to ask.”
A bird called from a nearby bush. Seemed to me we stood there long enough for the bird to mate and build a nest before I finally could speak. “You’re going to have to tell the sheriff, honey. And the sooner the better.”
She nodded and turned to go, shoulders drooping and her head down.
20
I arrived at my office to find Hector Blaine propping up my filing cabinet, talking to Walker. “Here she is now,” Walker said with obvious relief. “Mama, I need to get back to my own office.” He practically bolted.
I understood. The place reeked.
Hector was taller than Hiram, and bigger, with a shaven red face and greasy grizzled hair cut just below his ears. As soon as I sat down at my desk, he reached up one hand to take off a gray felt hat like most men stopped wearing around 1970. If Hector got his then, he’d certainly not cleaned it since. He might have washed his hands a year or two later, but the pores were black and he had great half moons caked under each nail. “Got a minute, Judge?”
“Sure, Hector. I’ve got a parrot, too, I’m still waiting for you to claim.”
“Well, now, I can’t rightly claim that parrot. It hates me, and I hate it. Just wring its neck. That’s the best thing. I don’t think you can eat ’em—never heard of anybody doing such—but if you fling him in your pasture, the buzzards’ll take care of him.”
The thought of all that glory, those incredible feathers, lying on the grass waiting for buzzards made me cringe. “You didn’t come to talk about the parrot, I guess. So what did you want?” The office was getting riper by the minute. He shifted from one foot to the other. Although it went against my better judgment, I invited, “Why don’t you sit down?” But I pointed him to Joe Riddley’s desk chair instead of my slip-covered red one. Leather is easier to clean.
He hitched up his crusted denim pants on the chair and chewed his lower lip. From a rim of scabs on it, I suspected he chewed it pretty often.
“It’s about Hiram.” For one heart-leaping second I thought he’d come to confess. But as he went on, my heart plopped back into the cold waters of reality. “I think he was killed on account of—you know what I mean.” He gave me a knowing little nod and looked anxiously toward the closed door between us and the store.
“The Confederate treasury?” The Blaine brothers were tediously consistent.
“That’d be it. I think he told somebody where it is, and they done for him. They’ll be after me, next. I need protection, Judge, in the worst way.” He hooked one bare ankle around the shaft of the chair and leaned so close I nearly gagged at his rancid breath. “It’s not anybody local, you know. It’s that criminal element he got mixed up with.”
“Criminal element?”
“Yeah, you know. Folks he met in jail.”
If I didn’t immediately respond, it was because I was remembering that Hiram had been in jail only once, while Hector had served three long sentences for various offenses. “Who, exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know their names, but I know they’re out to get me. Want to drive me off my land so’s they can take it over. I saw a man with binniculers walking through my watermelon patch not two weeks ago.”
“Could have been a bird watcher. They carry binoculars.”
“Naah. He was looking for the treasury. Just pretended to look at birds now and then. What I think is this. While he was in the pen, Hiram musta told somebody about it. Now they’re out, and they want it. You gotta help me, Judge. You gotta.”
I could tell he was scared. His right cheek twitched, and his hands couldn’t be still. But neither Bailey Gibbons nor Charlie Muggins was going to spare anybody to baby-sit Hector through this fantasy. “I’m not sure what we can do, exactly. You know our police force is pretty small. But so is the town. If there were strangers here, we’d know it.”
“They’s lots of people I don’t know.”
“Sure, but you know their faces, don’t you? Somebody new stands out a mile. If you see somebody you don’t know following you, make a note what they look like and go tell Chief Muggins.” I felt like a snake, but a happy snake. That ought to fix Charlie for suspecting Joe Riddley of killing Hiram.
So long as Joe Riddley didn’t do it.
I ignored that dratted voice and made another suggestion. “Maybe you ought to take the parrot after all. He could warn you if somebody tries to break in at night.”
“Too much trouble, Judge. Birds are
dirty,
” he said, virtuous as Mr. Clean.
“Well, you tell Chief Muggins if you notice anybody hanging around your place. That’s the best I can suggest.”
I expected him to stand up, but he hunched forward a little and said in a soft voice, “I don’t suppose you and t’other judge could see fit to help me with the funeral, could you? Seein’ how’s he died at your place ’n’ all? I’d like to lay him out real nice, but I can’t rightly come up with the money to do it. They’ll bury him like a pauper lest somebody kin he’p out. . . .” He trailed off and wiped a tear from his eye. Hector could cry at the drop of a pin. As a child, it had been his most outstanding accomplishment.
It made me mad that he thought we owed him a funeral. Seemed to me the Yarbroughs had done our share by providing a handy spot for the murder and a foster home for the parrot.
“Jed will take care of that. Let’s wait until he gets here,” I stalled.
“Could you just give me twenty dollars or so, to get a tie to wear to the funeral?”
“No, but I’ll call Taylor’s Department store and tell them to charge one to me.”
“Don’t bother.” We both knew he hadn’t been planning to buy a tie. “I sure hope nobody does to me what they done to Hiram. You’ll feel real bad, not helping me ’n’ all.”
“I sure will,” I agreed, showing him to the door. I hurried to open the window and spray some air neutralizer, thinking, That has to be the craziest man in town.
Then Jed Blaine arrived, sounding as crazy as his uncles. He claimed Hopemore might actually have aliens.
Jed didn’t look crazy. In a three-piece charcoal suit, pale gray shirt, gray-and-blue tie, gold tie tack, and highly polished black shoes, he looked like a prosperous young lawyer. To my surprise, I saw he’d filled out into a mighty handsome man. As fair as his uncles were dark (his mother had brown hair and blue eyes), he’d been an adorable but gawky child with a face full of freckles, light blue eyes framed by white lashes, and a shock of snow-white hair. Now the freckles were almost gone, and he wore his thick sandy hair parted precisely on the left side. He still had that engaging grin full of strong white teeth and a chuckle that made you want to chuckle along. If he stuck around a while, the single women and their mamas would be holding another series of parties. Meriwether might even reconsider her earlier decision.

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