Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man? (36 page)

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Authors: Patricia Sprinkle

BOOK: Thoroughly 03 - Who Invited the Dead Man?
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“But Joe Riddley’s getting stronger every day, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Once he gave his brain permission to let him walk, he started getting stronger at once. He even thinks more clearly.”
“But he looks old. We’re all getting old.”
I started to remind her that I was sixteen years younger than she, but I didn’t. I couldn’t remember the last time Gusta came to my house and acted so human.
“Have you heard what Pooh’s doing now?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “She’s taking in boarders. Hubert’s moving in with her, and she’s using his first year’s rent to put in an elevator. Makes her whole upstairs accessible.”
“I deserve a little credit for that,” I boasted. “Martha and I worked on him some, getting him to admit his big house was expensive to keep up when he wasn’t using half of it.” I didn’t tell Gusta, but I also told Hubert that Joe Riddley and I might be buying a smaller house in town. I hadn’t made up my mind to do it, but I’d told him I was considering it.
“Why did you suggest he move in with Pooh?” Gusta demanded.
I laughed. “We didn’t. Martha suggested he let Maynard fix him up a place in Maynard’s new house in town, so Maynard and Selena could get married. Hubert said he’d move to town, but he wasn’t living with lovebirds. Then one day he went to fix Pooh’s television. They got to talking about rattling around in big houses, and the next thing we knew, they had it all fixed up between them. He plans to move right after Christmas, and brags he can see the roof of his store from his new window.”
Gusta gave what started out as a disdainful huff and wound up a sad little sigh. “Now that Otis doesn’t drive, Pooh doesn’t come to see me much anymore.”
“Why don’t you move in with Pooh, too?” I spoke without thinking, but once I said it, it made a lot of sense. “She’s got lots of room. And Martha says that if Pooh had five people in her house, together they could hire a full-time nurse, housekeeper, and a cook cheaper than they could eventually all go into assisted living facilities.”
“Life isn’t only about money, MacLaren,” Gusta told me severely. “What on earth would I do with my own house? And Florine—” Did I detect a wistfulness behind the protest?
“Florine could help Lottie. And Maynard is drooling to turn your house into a first-rate antique shop. You could stipulate that he call it Wainwright House.”
She gave an impatient huff, but she had a thoughtful look in her eye.
 
Meriwether and Jed got married a week before Christmas, as soon as she could walk again. She was a radiant bride. I didn’t see any crow’s-feet. Jed was a happy groom, too, and when the minister said, “You may kiss the bride,” he did it rather thoroughly.
Darren agreed to go, although he was still fragile. I expected him to sit with us, but just as we got to the church, Kelly Keane joined him. “Will you sit with me? I don’t know many people.”
Maynard and Selena sat in front of us, and I don’t think they even knew who was getting married. Selena had a gorgeous diamond on her finger, and the way they kept looking at each other, I think they viewed the whole process as a rehearsal for their own wedding in January.
Joe Riddley walked into the church without a walker, and held my hand during the whole ceremony. When the preacher asked, “Will you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” he leaned over, kissed my temple, and whispered, “I sure do.”
Everybody seemed to have a good time at the reception except Gusta, who was heard to remark acidly that once a girl decided to throw herself away, there wasn’t a thing anybody could do about it.
After the reception, Jed and Meriwether went to change into their going-away clothes. They sent an usher to ask if I would join them in the church parlor in ten minutes.
They looked splendid together, she in dusty rose wool and he in gray, but so nervous that I joked, “It’s already legal. I don’t have to marry you again.” They smiled, but they were still jumpy as kittens chasing butterflies.
Jed reached into his pocket and brought out an old envelope. “We have a big favor to ask. I’m going to give you something, and after we’re gone, I want you to show it to Miss Gusta. But only after we’re gone. Do you understand?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Remember the Virgil you gave me last month? This was in it.” He took two yellowing sheets from the envelope and handed me one. It was a birth certificate for Jedediah Lafayette DuBose, born to Mary Helen Whitsett and Zachary Lafayette DuBose.
My eyes widened. “What—” He interrupted by handing me the second paper. Now, his eyes were brimming with tears.
Dear Jed,
Helena wrote in her large, sloppy scrawl,
I ought to of told you sooner, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Plese forgive me. I know I’m selfish, but I think of you as mine and want to die with you at my side. The fact is, honey, you are not my child. Your daddy was Zach DuBose, son of Mr. Lafette and Miss Pooh. Your mother was the only nice boss I ever had before Miss Mac. She and Zach loved each other a lot, but he didn’t think his daddy would take to her. She was not only a Yankee, but kin to General Sherman. When Zach got killed in Nam, Mary was so upset, you came early. She got so sick the Army hospital kept her, so she asked me to take you to her house and look after you until she got there. But she died.
She had told me she was an orfan, and I didn’t know what to do with you, so I took you back to Hopemore. I tried to give you to Zach’s folks, but Mister Lafette ordered me off the porch before I could tell him about Mary. I got so mad I took you home with me and did a terrible thing. I kept you. I have tried hard to keep you clean and nice, but I’m sorry you didn’t have all you could have. I did love you. Please forgive me.
At the end she had written
Mama,
then scratched it out and put
Helena Blaine.
I stared at him through a haze of my own tears. Poor Helena. But how could we have missed that line of Zach’s jaw, the clear blue of Pooh’s own eyes? Once you knew, the signs were there. We’d just none of us ever looked at a Blaine that way. “Helena tried to tell us near the end. It wasn’t ‘sack’ she was trying to say, it was ‘Zach.’ Oh, honey!” I held out my arms to hug him.
He held me with one arm and Meriwether with the other. “Don’t cry, Mac. Do you realize what this means? I get to take care of Pooh!”
But then I got so upset I had to back into a convenient chair. “You should have known years ago. If we hadn’t forgotten the books—but it never occurred to us she might have put anything in them. I am so sorry. How can I ever make it up to you?”
He grinned. “You are about to. You are to wait until we get out of here, then you are to sit Miss Gusta down and tell her.”
“You don’t want to tell her yourself, right now?”
He shook his head and grinned. “Nope.”
“What—” I had to clear my throat to get my voice working again. “What about Pooh?”
“We’ll tell Pooh when we get back from the honeymoon.”
Meriwether touched his arm, and he nodded. “I didn’t forget.” He pulled a second envelope out of his pocket. “Give Miss Gusta these. They are copies. Don’t you dare let her touch the originals.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to tell her now?”
He and Meriwether shook their heads simultaneously. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “I found these the night you gave me the books, and I knew Hiram was right. Miss High and Mighty would come crawling, begging me to marry Meriwether, if she knew I was Pooh’s grandson. But I won’t have her fawning all over me on my wedding day.”
They departed in a shower of rice.
I decided to take Joe Riddley home and be with him a little while before I went back to tell Gusta. She’d need a nap after the wedding. Besides, she looked so sour, watching them go, I decided she’d enjoy a little more misery.
After we got home, Joe Riddley and I sat for a while on our porch, Joe on his shoulder and Lulu at my feet. The doctor had ordered Hubert to walk every evening, so he moseyed down to our place and sat a spell, too. He told us he often went over to Pooh’s for lunch now, and she joined him on his walk in her motorized chair. “We went as far as the square not long ago,” he bragged, getting himself together to head back home. “I figure by spring we’ll be able to walk as far as your new house.”
“Not to worry. Not to worry,” Joe advised, preening his left wing.
“We don’t have a new house,” Joe Riddley objected. But after Hubert left, he caught my hand with a thoughtful expression. “You know what, Little Bit? When we get old—real old, like Pooh and Hubert there—I think we ought to get us a littler place. Let Ridd and Martha have this big house, and get a little place, just for us.”
“We’ll do that,” I promised, squeezing his hand, “when we get as old as Hubert.”
Read on for an excerpt from Patricia Sprinkle’s next thoroughly Southern mystery
Who Left That Body
in the Rain?
Coming from Signet in December 2002
I don’t know how long we’d been napping when the phone rang. I was so groggy and the room was so dim, I thought it was the alarm until Joe Riddley reached over me and carried the receiver to his ear. “Yeah? Yarbrough’s.” He, too, sounded half-asleep.
Weighed down by the telephone cord, I heard the first four words: “This is Isaac James.”
That’s all I heard. Joe Riddley sat up and pressed the phone to his ear; then his voice went from concerned to gray in one second flat. “What? Where?” He listened. “Do they know who?”
I couldn’t hear a thing, even though I got up on one elbow and tried. I felt a drowsy spurt of resentment—if this was magistrate business, Joe Riddley was no longer the magistrate. Then I remembered he knew that as well as I did. If the call had been for me, he’d have given it to me.
As he listened, he rubbed one hand up and down his cheek as if he was trying to massage his brain into working right. Finally he said, “Of course we will. We’ll go right now. Thanks.”
He handed me the phone, already fumbling for his shoes. “Charlie Muggins is on his way to the MacDonalds’ and Ike thinks we ought to be there when he arrives. Skye MacDonald’s been killed.”
“But how?” I was groggy, shocked and bewildered.
“Hit by a car, apparently. Let’s go, Little Bit. Gwen Ellen’s gonna need us.” Joe Riddley was already by the bedpost, reaching for his pants.
Nothing wakes a person up like a sudden death—so long as it’s not your own. My feet were on the floor and my denim skirt half on before I drew another deep breath. “Where?” I demanded, pulling a green turtleneck over my head and reaching for a green-and-blue plaid jacket.
“Ike said it happened out on one of those farm roads just inside the city limits.” Joe Riddley’s voice was a bit crooked, because he was tying his tie. That answered my next question, which was why it was a matter for the city police instead of the sheriff. I was real sorry, because our sheriff, Bailey “Buster” Gibbons, is an excellent lawman and a personal friend, while Police Chief Charlie Muggins is one of those people I think the world could stagger on without.
As Joe Riddley tied his shoes, I hurried to do something with my sleep-flattened hair. I was freshening my lipstick when he announced, “I’m going, with or without you.”
I hurried out after him. I grabbed my pocketbook and disentangled myself from Lulu dancing around my feet.
“Wait. We have to put Joe in the barn and Lulu out in the pen.”
Outside, I saw why our room had been so dim. The dark clouds had convened overhead.
Joe Riddley carried our parrot, Joe, to the barn while I dropped our dog, Lulu, over the fence like a sack of potting soil. The bird dogs woofed a halfhearted welcome.
The clouds began to spit fat drops. They were pelting the windshield so hard as we turned into the MacDonalds’ long curving drive that we could hardly see, but we knew the way to the big brick Tudor house trimmed in cream stucco and dark brown half-timbering. It sat on two acres of lawn surrounded by a narrow belt of virgin forest. Close to the house, camellias glowed like rubies and garnets among emerald leaves. A tea olive bush near the drive would be giving off a rich scent in the rain. Skye’s wife, Gwen Ellen, had a love of gardening that kept her yard fragrant and lovely in every season.
“Oh, dear,” I exclaimed when we got close to the house. “Charlie beat us here.” Chief Muggins had pulled his blue-and-yellow cruiser behind the door that concealed Gwen Ellen’s powder blue Thunderbird. The only other car on the drive belonged to Gwen Ellen’s maid.
Skye had rebuilt their garage when his kids were in high school so it would hold all four cars. Then when their daughter, Laura, came home from grad school, he’d converted the space above the garage into a suite for her. Each car had its separate garage door, and today all were shut except the one for Laura’s white Taurus. She must have come home fast from the motor company, but her daddy would fuss if he knew she’d left it open. Skye fussed at Gwen Ellen and the children all the time about keeping those doors closed, and at us for leaving our cars sitting out most of the time. He could cite statistics about how many thefts occur because people leave garage doors open.

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