Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (16 page)

“Not yet, except it was somebody strong. Whoever killed her broke her neck with his bare hands. We ought to be able to get prints from her skin, unless he wore gloves.”

“Which almost everybody has been doing this weekend. Do you reckon—”

“No more questions. Joe Riddley made it very clear this morning that you are not to get involved with this case.”

“All I was going to ask—”

Before I could finish, Martha spoke at my shoulder. “Let me talk to him a minute.”

I handed over the receiver and stood there fuming. So help me, I was going to think of something dreadful to do to Joe Riddley in the next few days. He talked about me meddling, when all he seemed to do anymore was meddle in my life. I scarcely listened as Martha asked, “Is there any way I could go to the Parker house and get these girls some clothes? They arrived in nothing but their nightgowns. I’ve scrounged up some pants and sweatshirts of Cricket’s for today, but they need something to wear to church tomorrow, and the social worker didn’t bring any underwear.”

She listened while he talked, then said, “Great, but I’ll probably bring Mac instead. Ridd and Pop like their Saturday-night television. Thanks.”

She was about to hang up when one of those flukes of memory occurred. I grabbed the phone. “Baxter. Robin introduced her brother as Billy Baxter. See if you can find him somewhere down near Tennille.”

After supper, Cricket insisted that we all play a game of Go Fish, which was his current passion, and it was nearly eight when we finished. I offered to take the kids upstairs and put them to bed while Martha loaded the dishwasher. The men offered to retire to the den to watch television.

I supervised while the children put on pajamas (the boys) and nightgowns (the girls) and brushed their teeth; then we all gathered in Cricket’s room—which had been his daddy’s, when Ridd was small—for a story and prayers. The four of them perched on Cricket’s bed and I sat on a chair beside the bed. I told the story of the three little pigs, which was all I could think of at the moment, and Bradley and Cricket said prayers. Natalie and Anna Emily seemed baffled by that process.

Cricket concluded his, “And dear God, let Me-Mama find the bad man who killed Natalie and Anna Emily’s mama. Amen.”

He opened his eyes and cut them my way. “You are looking for him, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “Not this time, honey. Pop has told me not to do that anymore.”

“You have to! I promised you’d find him. I told them you’re the best detective in the whole world, and that you find bad guys fast.”

“The man who killed my mommy was real bad,” Natalie assured me.

“Just like the one who killed my mommy,” Bradley said soberly.

Cricket bounced on the bed for emphasis. “There’s lots and lots of bad guys. They could huff and puff and blow this house down and kill us all!”

The four of them huddled together. Four sets of eyes regarded me with terror and expectation.

“You could look a little,” Cricket wheedled. “Before
everybody’s
mama gets killed.”

What grandmother could deny that plea?

“I’ll look a little,” I agreed. “But don’t you tell Pop, or he’ll skin me alive.”

“If he does, T-daddy will mount you so Cricket can keep you,” Bradley promised.

On that cheerful note I kissed them all, tucked Cricket and Bradley into the bunk beds in Cricket’s room, and accompanied the two girls to the guest room across the hall. When I had tucked them into the big double bed, Natalie held one finger to her lips. “Shhh. Do you hear that?”

I listened, but didn’t hear anything unusual. “What?”

“Those dogs. If they get out, they could come in this house and eat us.” She burrowed down in the covers and pulled them over her head.

I pulled the covers back and stroked her wispy hair. “Those dogs are my friends, and they don’t eat people. They eat dog food. Besides, they live in that pen. They don’t want to come in the house. They are singing you a lullaby. Hear them? The one with the real high voice is my dog, Lulu, and the one that goes
ooooh
is Cricket Dog. They’ll sing you to sleep if you’ll let them.” I hoped that was so.

Anna Emily held out her arms and squeezed me tight around the neck. “I want to go home with you,” she whispered.

“Not tonight, honey. Go to sleep.”

I tiptoed down the stairs, hoping Martha and Ridd would get some rest. Barking dogs and grieving children can be hard on a good night’s sleep.

When I got to the kitchen, I asked, “You got any more of that tea?”

Martha looked at the clock. “We don’t have time. Buster said he’d meet us at Robin’s house at eight thirty. Do you have your car? Mine’s out of gas and I was too tired this morning to fill it up on my way home.”

The air was still crisp and frosty, the sky full of a billion stars. The sheriff was sitting in the drive when we arrived, sipping a drink and eating a hamburger. “Have you been home to bed yet?” I greeted him.

“No, but I’m working up to it. Just had to wait for two women to come by the house, but you know how women are. Always late.”

His breath rose like smoke as he climbed out of the cruiser, ambled up the steps to the door, and let us in with a key. “Don’t take anything except the kids’ clothes,” he warned.

“Stuffed animals, books, and toys?” I bargained. “To make them feel more at home?”

“Okay, but nothing except their possessions.”

He propped himself against the doorjamb, looking dead on his feet.

“Go on home,” I commanded. “You can trust Martha, if you don’t trust me. And this door can be locked from the inside. We’ll lock up when we leave. We won’t be long.”

I could see he was tempted.

“Go!” I gave him a shove and he let himself be persuaded.

Inside, the heat was so low that we left our coats on. Martha headed toward the bedrooms at the back of the house. “Could you get me something to put these clothes in?” she called. “I forgot to bring a suitcase.”

I almost didn’t hear her. I was staring at the living room and dining room in astonishment. They were full of antiques. Not the kind of antiques we have, bought several generations ago for durability and not yet worn out. These were the gorgeous kind—the sort that Maynard sells—which I would never trust around children.

Come to think of it, the rooms didn’t look like they had been lived in by children—or by anybody else. I did not see one book or magazine, one toy, or one photograph. The pictures on the walls were oil paintings in wide gold frames that looked like they ought to be in a museum. Two even had lights above them, although their cords dangled down the wall unplugged.

The floor creaked beneath my feet as I moseyed to the kitchen to look for grocery bags. The place felt creepy even with Martha opening drawers and rattling hangers in the girls’ room.

I couldn’t find the kitchen light switch at first, but in light reflected from the dining room I finally saw a double switch across the kitchen beside the back door. The place must have been wired by the man who did our new house, because none of these switches were where they’d be most convenient, either. When I flipped what would logically be the kitchen switch, a light came on outside, illuminating a back patio. Something that looked like an antique quilt lay folded on a chaise out there. It would be ruined if it stayed out in the frost and sun very long, not to mention what squirrels and birds would do to it. Since there was no crime tape on the patio, I opened the back door, retrieved the quilt, and set it on a dining room chair.

“Are you bringing me bags?” Martha called.

I shut the back door, pulled my coat tighter around me, and found four paper bags folded and stacked in a paper box beside the refrigerator. I also found three plastic bags stuffed into another plastic bag hanging on the inside of the pantry door. If I’d hung our plastic bags inside my pantry door, their bulk plus the food on the shelves would have kept the door from closing. Robin had one single shelf of food, containing only a box of Cheerios, a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, an unopened jar of applesauce, and a couple of cans of peaches. It looked like Anna Emily had been right: The girls had been raised on peanut butter and applesauce. Had that woman spent her money on antiques instead?

I went to take Martha the bags and met her in the living room, coming to see what was taking me so long. While she headed off to fill the bags, I peered around the living room. There was something I had forgotten in there, something about Buster. What was it? I couldn’t remember. Memory is a funny thing. You can remember you have forgotten something, even remember what the thing was about, and still not remember what it was.

I moseyed into the dining room and inspected the china cabinet, which held two sets of china. Feeling a bit furtive, I opened the doors and took a quick look at the bottoms of plates. Robin had a set of Lenox for twelve and a set of Royal Doulton for ten. She must have done either a lot of entertaining I hadn’t heard about or have preferred to invest her money in valuables rather than trusting a bank.

I was still bothered that I had forgotten something.

While I tried to remember, I decided to explore Robin’s cabinets. You can tell a lot about a woman by her kitchen. Martha, for instance, has practical, childproof dishes and is a saver. I think she’s got every plastic container she ever carried home from the grocery store. She uses them to store leftovers and for freezing fruits and vegetables each summer. Walker’s wife, Cindy, is a thoroughbred who has china everyday dishes and stores leftovers in fancy containers she bought at a gourmet party. And me? That’s my business.

Robin’s cupboards astonished me so much that I called, “Martha, come here a minute. I want you to look at something.”

Martha arrived with a small shirt in her hands.

“Stand there and tell me what you think.” One by one I opened the cupboard doors.

The shelves were full of gray flannel lumps. I touched several lumps on the bottom shelf and described their contents, one by one. “A Paul Revere sterling silver bowl. A sterling silver vase. A silver coffee service: coffeepot, teapot, sugar bowl, creamer, and slop bowl. Over here”—I opened another cabinet where the contents were self-evident; I named them anyway—“a set of Waterford crystal for twelve.”

I pointed toward the china cabinet behind her in the dining room. “One set of Lenox china and one set of Royal Doulton.” I moved to the pantry. “Here you’d expect to find food, right? You would find very little.” I opened the door and pointed to the solitary shelf containing foodstuffs. “But that mahogany box on the top shelf? That’s a Gorham silver flatware service for twelve. I climbed on a chair to look. And that”—I pointed to a large flat object wrapped in gray flannel, standing on the floor beneath the shelves—“is the tray to the silver service. There’s not a single dish in the place that children could eat on, except the stack of paper plates on the counter and a few plastic forks and spoons in one drawer. There is milk and a half-empty jar of applesauce in the fridge”—I opened the door to demonstrate—“and a good supply of frozen dinners.” I closed the lower door and opened the upper one. Most of the freezer space was taken up with dinners, but the compartment also held ten medium cans of frozen juice.

“Now look at this.” I took out one of the cans and pried up the lid with my fingernails. “Voilà!” I pulled out a wad of paper towels and carefully unfolded them on the counter. Diamonds sent sparks all over the kitchen as I dangled a necklace in the air.

Martha’s eyes were wider than salad plates. “Do you reckon Buster saw all this?”

“Not the jewelry. If he’d seen the silver and dishes, he’d most likely have said to himself, ‘The woman had some nice things.’ I doubt he’d wonder where the dishes were for her children, or think to take the tops off her frozen grape juice cans.”

“Why did you?”

“I’m short. I was trying to see if she had any meat in the freezer, and I had to move this can to see what was behind it. It didn’t feel like solid juice, so I wondered if the freezer was thawing and I lifted the can to shake it. That’s when I noticed that the white strip that connects the top to the can was gone.”

Martha came over and lifted another can. “This one isn’t juice, either. I think we ought to call Buster.”

“I think you ought to put that right back where you found it and get out of here,” said a male voice.

The young man I’d seen around town back in the fall and again more recently, searching for his wife, came through the back door. I’d forgotten to lock it in my haste to find Martha some bags.

He wore a brown leather bomber jacket and gloves. His red hair gleamed in the kitchen light.

I remembered the other things I had forgotten, too—to lock the front door behind Buster. How stupid could I get, leaving two doors unlocked when we were prowling around the home of a recent murder victim? I shot Martha a look to say, “I’m sorry,” but her attention was on the young man.

“That stuff is mine,” he told us, stepping into the kitchen. “All the jewelry, silver, dishes, and furniture. Bertie took it when she left.” Our skeptical looks must have registered, because he nodded toward the cabinet shelf. “Take down one of those bags and look on the bottom of what’s in it. Go ahead. Look.”

I pulled out the Paul Revere bowl and turned it over.

He didn’t come near enough to read it. “IWH 173475910. Right?”

I nodded.

“My mother was Iris Wilson Handley, and the numbers are our family’s birthdays. You’ll find that engraved on brass plates attached to all the furniture and etched onto all the silver, except the coffee set. That has SSW 122345. Sara Shelton Wilson was my grandmother and she got married on December 23, 1945. The jewelry isn’t marked, but I have pictures of it on file with my lawyer. I did that before I went overseas, while I was updating my will.”

He started across the room with his gloved hand out for the necklace. I put it behind me. Martha was eyeing the wall telephone beside the fridge, but it was too far away for either of us to reach it first.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I just want my stuff.” As he moved, something bulged in his pocket. It looked like a gun.

I reminded myself that he hadn’t threatened us—yet. Besides, he had eaten a meal on my tab at Myrtle’s. He had no reason to hurt me, or so I hoped. “You gave me your card, but I’ve forgotten your name,” I told him.

“Grady Handley, ma’am. Formerly Captain Grady Handley, of the U.S. Army.”

“And you think Robin Parker was your wife?”

“I don’t
think
she was my wife. She
was
my wife.”

“But you called her Bertie.”

“Her name was Roberta. At least, that’s what she told me. After all the other lies, I don’t know what’s true anymore.”

“The children are yours?”

He gave a short, not-funny laugh. “That’s one of the things I don’t know. The little one must be, but I never knew a thing about her. It gave me a real shock to see her on the sidewalk that day, asking if she could go home with me. It was like looking at my own picture at that age. I guess Bertie was pregnant when I left to go overseas, but she never mentioned it. Never said the kid had been born, either—just like she never mentioned she was pregnant when she married me. For years I actually believed Natalie was mine and born early, even though she never looked a thing like either one of us. Can you believe I was that dumb?” Again he barked that sarcastic laugh. “You’ll believe anything when you’re bewitched.”