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Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

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BOOK: Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man?
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“No.”
She must have chickened out. “Well, I’ve got something in my closet you need to see, and something you need to hear.”
When he got there, I pointed to the old boot and stood back so he could examine it. “Look inside. And don’t put all the dust in your report.”
He grunted and shone his flashlight into the boot. “Got a dish towel handy?”
He gently lifted the boot and tested it for weight, then dumped it onto the dish towel. The silver gun lay between us. He shone his light over it. “It’s been wiped clean of prints.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t say you did. Is this the one Joe Riddley is missing?”
“No, he gave his to Maynard for the museum before his accident and forgot he’d done it. When I found this one, I brought Cricket over this afternoon to see if he could identify it. He couldn’t, but he said Pop gave his own little gun to Maynard. Maynard verifies that.” It was all true, if you allowed for a week between some of the events.
Buster took a pen from his pocket and poked the gun, lifting it to examine it. “Got any notion whose this is?”
“From something Alice Fulton told me, I think Pooh gave it to Gusta years ago. Pooh said Fayette gave her the gun for protection when he was away, but she bought Bowser and gave the gun to Gusta.”
“Bowser—you mean that old St. Bernard they had?”
“That’s what Pooh told me this afternoon.”
He shook his jowls with a mournful frown. “If that gun’s been lying around Wainwright’s all these years, anybody in town could have taken it at one of their parties or meetings.”
“No, it was there a few weeks ago.” I told him what Alice had said. I still didn’t tell him Darren could have taken it. There was absolutely no proof that he had.
He took a plastic bag from his pocket and carefully put the gun in it.
“At least you know Joe Riddley didn’t kill Hiram.” There, I’d finally spoke my fear out loud.
“Never thought he had.” Buster stood and reached for his hat. “You never went hunting with him, did you?” I shook my head. “He won’t shoot anything he can’t eat, and he’s the only man I ever hunted with who whispers before he pulls the trigger, ‘Forgive me, fellow.’ ”
My lower lip began to tremble. “Will he ever hunt again, Buster?”
His hand was warm and firm on my shoulder. “Believe it, Little Bit. Just keep on believing it. That’s all we can do right now.”
He hurried out, but not before I’d seen his own eyes were shiny with tears.
22
Sheriff Gibbons called the next morning. “It’s the gun that killed Hiram. It’s also Pooh’s gun. She, Otis, and Meriwether have all identified it. Meriwether confirmed she kept it on the closet shelf, and Miss Fulton gave us the dates when she saw it and found it missing. The way Miss Gusta locks up even when they are home, it had to be taken by somebody who has been a guest in the house this fall.”
“She’s had umpteen meetings and at least one chamber-music party,” I reminded him. “Anybody could have nipped up there and taken it.”
“Only if they knew it was there. Miss Fulton reluctantly admits Hernandez knew it was, and had opportunity to take it. He did it, Mac. I firmly believe that. But proving it could be hard. He was smart enough to come back to your kitchen after the party to make sure his prints were all over the place.”
I hated to think about that. Thank goodness I was too
busy
to think much right then. Our chief magistrate was down with flu, so I had to hold a lot more probable cause hearings than usual as well as sign more warrants and go to the jail for more bond hearings. The store was holding its pre-Halloween sale, doing a brisk business in pumpkins and cornstalks. The nursery was getting ready to receive hundreds of Christmas trees and poinsettias. And Joe Riddley still went to therapy twice a day. I spent so much time in my car, I kept expecting to meet myself.
I ran in to Otis at the grocery store one day and told him I felt guilty for neglecting Pooh. “Why, she’s doin’ fine, Miss MacLaren. Jed Blaine has been coming by to see her every afternoon, and it’s doing her a world of good. A world of good.”
I wished somebody could do Darren a world of good. Shadows were developing under his eyes and his smile was a little more strained each day. He hadn’t dyed his hair in a while, either. It was electric blue with brown roots.
“Are you still going out with Kelly and or Alice?” I teased halfheartedly one morning.
“Mostly Alice,” he said with a faint grin. “She’s a lot of fun when she gets out of town. Keeps me from thinking about—you know.” He gestured with one hand. I could tell she hadn’t told him what she’d had to tell the sheriff.
I hated to think he could kill a man, though. He was so dedicated to helping people get better. Joe Riddley adored him, and even Joe now greeted him with a squawk—which was more than I got. Joe still had no use for women, merely tolerated me as a necessary evil. The feeling was mutual.
Speaking of mutual, Jed and Meriwether seemed to have a mutual attraction just then that neither sought or wanted. Granted, Hopemore isn’t very big, but I can go days without running into members of my own family. It was uncanny how Jed and Meriwether kept running into each other. Every meeting, of course, was faithfully reported around town.
Jed went to buy a paper at the drugstore. Meriwether ran in for a new lipstick and didn’t see him until they were both heading to pay. He asked if she’d followed him in. She got so mad—she paid, then stomped out without her lipstick.
Meriwether stopped by the Bi-Lo for paper towels, and only one register was open. Jed came to the line to buy a candy bar just as she discovered she had forgotten to bring her wallet. When she rooted around in the bottom of her purse, she was a dime short. Jed handed the cashier a dime with a wide smile. “Here, I’ve got plenty of money.” The cashier said later she thought Meriwether was going to level him with the towels.
Jed wheeled Pooh into church to sit with Gusta, and sat down beside her. Meriwether, coming in late, made Slade take her to a different pew.
Ridd took Jed to play golf over at the country club and reported, “You’ll never guess who was playing ahead of us, Mama. Slade and Meriwether. Slade offered to make it a four-some, but I’ve got at least a little bit of sense.”
“How was Jed’s game?”
“Terrible. He bogeyed almost every hole. Meriwether was better, but over par.”
“How do you know?”
He grinned. “Jed jotted her shots on our card. He swore she was missing shots to let Slade win, and it made him furious. You should have heard him.”
A couple of nights later, Walker and Cindy took me to her birthday dinner at a new restaurant down by the river. Sadly, we all agreed it would be an easier occasion without Joe Riddley, so I asked Darren if I could pay him to come down for the evening. Joe Riddley was delighted to write “Darren coming” in his log. As I climbed into Walker’s Infiniti, I hoped I hadn’t asked Darren to return to the scene of his crime.
There were twelve of us at dinner, including several single friends of Cindy’s. Jed had been invited, too, and I could tell that two young women, at least, could fancy themselves as an Atlanta lawyer’s wife. The only time I got to speak to him alone was briefly while we waited for the hostess. He sidled over to me and said, “I want to talk to you sometime about Pooh. She needs a legal guardian. Do you know who her lawyer is?”
I pressed one hand to my mouth in dismay. “I meant to find out, but I plumb forgot.”
“I wish you would. Somebody has to take care of her. I wish I lived close enough.”
The hostess arrived then to show us to a large reserved table by a big plate-glass window overlooking the water. I was already in my seat before I noticed Slade and Meriwether at a small table beyond ours. It only seemed neighborly to speak. If I’d been hosting our party, I’d have invited them to join us. However, Walker gave Slade a curt nod and sat next to me, with his back to him.
Slade didn’t seem especially anxious to talk to us, either. All his attention was on Meriwether, who was gorgeous in black velvet. Seemed like she’d been getting even prettier recently.
Jed amiably sat between Cindy’s two beautiful friends. He also steered them to seats where Meriwether could see them real well.
She wasn’t looking. She was gazing at Slade like he’d personally carved the full moon outside the window and painted its reflection on the gently flowing water.
Since I was sitting where I could see both Jed and Meriwether, I watched to see if they’d start giving each other little probing looks, asking silent questions like, “Are you happy?” “Are you eating right?” Instead, they both seemed utterly content. I opened my menu and reminded myself we didn’t live in Hollywood. In Hopemore, not every story has a romantic ending.
After we’d ordered, Slade called to our waiter and asked for more dressing for his salad. Apparently the waiter brought the wrong kind, because as he scurried off to replace it, Slade told Meriwether, “Half the people in the world are below average, sweetheart, and most of them are waiters.” He hadn’t spoken loudly, but our tables were so close that Walker and I heard him.
Walker’s head jerked up and his eyes got wide. He leaned over and murmured, “Mama, can you see that man’s left hand?”
“No, why?”
Walker’s nostrils flared and his face flushed. I wondered when he’d had his blood pressure checked. “I’d like to know if part of his pinkie is missing.”
“I can tell you that much. It is. He caught it in a car door when he was little. Why?”
Walker pounded the table beside him lightly. “I know who he is! And why I don’t like him!” He picked a roll from the basket and started picking it to bits like he used to pick the stuffing from my cushions.
“Care to share the knowledge?”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “Sure, but it’s silly. Remember that trip my class took to Washington in fifth grade, when I worked my tail off earning half the money and you and Daddy put up the other half?”
“Yes.”
“And remember how we had one too many people going, so I volunteered to room and buddy with somebody from another school, because I thought it would be cool to get to know somebody who wasn’t from Hopemore?”
“Yes.” Surely this couldn’t be heading where I thought it was. I took a roll, too, and spread it with a lot of butter. I crave cholesterol when I’m nervous.
“And remember how I came home and told you I had a terrible time, because my roommate and buddy turned out to be a bully from Columbus, two years older than everybody else, who was so awful nobody from his own school would room with him?” Walker lathered the remaining roll with a lot more butter than his arteries needed, and took a savage bite.
“Slade’s not from Georgia,” I reminded him. “Maybe he just looks like that boy.”
“No, it’s him. He used to say that very same thing about anybody and everybody. ‘Half the world’s below average.’ He embarrassed me to death everywhere we went.”
He’d done a lot more than that. Walker came home complaining that they’d had to stay with their buddy the whole trip, and his would never stop to look at anything he wanted to see. He wouldn’t even go to the bathroom when Walker needed to. I’d been real upset back then that the teachers hadn’t assigned Walker another buddy, or added the two of them to another pair. Now he added something he hadn’t told us then. “He flat-out refused to sleep in a double bed with another boy. He’d have made me sleep on the
floor
if the other two boys in our room hadn’t told him I had paid for my bed, and he could jolly well sleep on the floor himself. He did, but said he’d break my arm if I ever fussed to the teachers about him. He could have, too. He was big, Mama. Lots bigger than I was back then.” He chewed with the contentment of a man who has finally grown as big as the bullies.
I must have sat for a full minute trying to absorb all that. I found I was still furious with that child who had ruined Walker’s trip. “You’re sure?” I finally asked weakly.
“Danged sure. He hasn’t even changed much, now that I know who he is. Except he had real long hair then. He still struts like the king of the universe and is charming with folks he wants to impress, but treats little people like dirt. Back then he sucked up to all the teachers.” He gave a low chuckle. “As one of his best advertisers, I hope he finds out one day I’m that little kid he bullied all over Washington.”
He hadn’t spoken loudly, either, but he’s got a carrying voice, and the last part of his sentence filled one of those silences that happen at meals. Slade slid back instantly and came toward us with a big grin on his face. He laid one hand on Walker’s shoulder. “Are you my old roomie from the fifth-grade Washington trip? I thought you looked familiar.”
I suspected he’d been waiting for the right minute to trot out that line, because I knew the very minute he’d found out who Walker was. It was the Sunday on Meriwether’s porch, when Gusta said something about Walker
Crane
Yarbrough. That’s why he dropped his paper in Alice’s lap, causing her to kick over my tea. Back when Walker was ten, he experimented for a few months with being called by his middle name. He’d gone on the Washington trip as Crane.
BOOK: Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man?
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