Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (2 page)

For months, Joe Riddley had been threatening to shackle me to my desk to keep me from “meddling in murder.” I never believed he’d do it.

In fact, when he came into our office that Thursday afternoon in mid-September and set an icy Coca-Cola and a Hershey bar beside my computer keyboard, I was almost ready to nominate him for a sainthood merit badge. What held up his nomination was a look on his face that meant he was up to something. When you’ve been married nearly forty-five years, you learn to read signs like that.

I hadn’t learned to read them well enough.

“Is this a bribe or an apology?” I put one hand over the candy bar so he couldn’t take it back.

“Give me space!” That wasn’t Joe Riddley. It was Bo, the big scarlet macaw whose rainbow tail feathers streamed down Joe Riddley’s back. We had inherited Bo from a man who died in our house a couple of years before,
¹
and my husband often took the bird to work, claiming Bo got lonely at home. I didn’t complain. I often took Lulu, my three-legged beagle, to work with me for the very same reason. She was lying beside my desk at the moment, worrying a fat knot of red and brown cloth that she preferred to store-bought toys.

I held the candy bar ready to open as soon as I got Joe Riddley’s explanation.

“Neither. I figured those might keep you sending out invoices until quitting time. If you don’t want them—”

“I want them, all right. They are probably the only incentives in the world that would keep me working on a day like this.” If Joe Riddley wasn’t ready to confess, I could wait.

I unwrapped the candy and looked wistfully out our office window. Georgia in mid-September is still hot, but already the air was getting that golden tinge that heralds autumn. While the trees were weeks from changing yet, the breeze rippling the leaves on the triple poplar beyond our parking lot had a lighthearted look, no longer encumbered by the weight of summer humidity. “I envy you, getting to work outside.”

“Remind me of that on a rainy day next January, or in July when the thermometer nears a hundred.”

Joe Riddley and I co-own Yarbrough Feed, Seed, and Nursery in Hopemore, the seat of Hope County, which is located in that wedge of Georgia between I-20 and I-16. He runs the landscaping part of our business and manages the nursery on the outskirts of town, which sells shrubs and trees to homeowners, developers, and landscaping firms. I keep the books and oversee the store in town, which deals in animal feed, seeds, bedding plants, potting soil, pesticides, fertilizers, and garden equipment.

He peered over my shoulder at the spreadsheet on my computer screen. “We still got money in the bank?”

“Not to worry,” Bo advised. I have never known if that bird knows what it’s saying or merely gets it right sometimes.

I spoke through a mouthful of chocolate. “Some. The nursery is going to show a nice profit when we collect from those new developments up near I-20, but the store’s been losing money since last November. The only thing that’s held steady is large-animal feed, and once developers turn pastures into subdivisions, that will go down the drain. We need to consider what we’re going to do pretty soon.”

In case you are wondering, it wasn’t my poor management that had the store running behind; it was what some folks call progress. Back when the federal highway that runs through town was a main drag, it brought right many tourists our way each year. Once I-20 took the traffic, tourism slowed to a trickle, and some folks predicted that Hopemore would shrivel up and die. Of course, the primary business in the county at the time was agriculture, which was great for Yarbrough’s.

Like Joe Riddley often says, however, “Land is like gold. They aren’t making any more of it.” In the past few years, our part of the state had been seeing what the chamber of commerce called “revitalization” and other folks called “the second Yankee invasion”: young seniors who wanted to enjoy early retirement free of snow and ice and who were willing to pay ridiculous prices for houses in cookie-cutter subdivisions sprawling over former fields and pastures. Our population used to be a steady thirteen thousand in the Hopemore greater metropolitan area. The next census would show a considerable jump.

Furthermore, while newcomers might be willing to fill our pastures and fields with new neighborhoods in their search for warmth and recreation, they wanted to shop in familiar places. The entire South had broken out in a rash of national chain restaurants, stores, and motels. Hopemore had recently added a Waffle House, and the previous fall a big superstore had opened at the edge of town, to the delight of newcomers—who didn’t seem to realize that the small-town charm they had moved south for was headed for extinction. Local merchants were closing their doors at an alarming rate.

Joe Riddley and I were holding on so far, but the superstore had both a garden center and a pet department, so they sold almost everything our store carried, and at lower prices. I couldn’t blame people for wanting to save money, but it irked me when somebody bought a plant at the other place and came to us for free advice on where to plant it and how to keep it alive. The superstore’s garden center staff knew diddly-squat about horticulture. And while I appreciated my husband’s determination not to let employees go until we absolutely had to, we couldn’t run the store as a charity indefinitely.

Joe Riddley rattled his keys in his pocket. “You been to the bathroom lately?”

That might seem like a personal question, but when you co-own a business, questions aren’t always what they appear. The day before, a small boy had flushed his sister’s plastic coin purse down our toilet. I’d had a plumber in there half the morning trying to fish it out.

“Five minutes ago. It’s working fine.”

“That’s good.”

He shifted from one foot to the other, unusually restless.

“Sic ’em, boy!” Bo urged.

I reached again for my Coke. “For a nickel, I’d pack up and go down to Ridd and Martha’s for a swim. I’ve been thinking of that pool all afternoon.”

A year before, Joe Riddley and I had moved from the old Yarbrough homeplace and turned it over to our older son, Ridd, and his wife, Martha—as Joe Riddley’s parents had turned it over to us when we had two boys to raise. Our grandson, Cricket, would be the fifth Joe Riddley Yarbrough to grow up in that place. The thing I missed most was the swimming pool. During warm weather, I went down several times a week to swim.

As I took another swig of Coke, Joe Riddley dropped a coin.

“Is that my nickel?” I was so busy drinking I scarcely noticed him crawling around my desk—until he grabbed my ankle. I smacked him. “Stop that! What if somebody takes a notion to mosey back to look at rakes and hoes?” The top half of our office door was a clear pane of glass, so we were visible to anybody who came to the rear of the store.

“Back off! Give me space!” Bo demanded, trying to take a nip out of my hand.

Something cold circled my shin. I heard a snap. “Hey!” I peered down at my husband’s broad back. “What are you doing?” Anklets weren’t my style, and this one was heavy.

“What I should have done years ago.” I heard another click. “There’s been a body found out on the bypass, and I don’t want you haring over there to get involved.”

I tried to lift my foot, but it moved only a few inches. It was securely fastened to one leg of the oak rolltop that had outlasted three generations of Yarbroughs. I could no more lift that desk than I could lift the courthouse down the street.

Playing along, I tugged at the cuffs—succeeding only in bruising my ankle and snagging my panty hose. “You can’t do this. What if I need to leave the office?”

“You’ve already been to the bathroom.”

He climbed to his feet with remarkable agility for a man of sixty-six. That’s one benefit of lifting heavy plants and working outdoors his entire life. Then the old hypocrite bent down and kissed the top of my head.

“Let me out of here!” I still thought he was joking. “I’m not going over to the bypass. But what if I have to go down to the sheriff’s detention center for a hearing?”

In addition to working at the store, two years ago I became one of three magistrates in Hope County. I hold court each week to hear cases of county ordinance violations, hold traffic court down in the south end of the county a couple of times a month, and may be called by a deputy at any time, day or night, to go down to the detention center (the fancy name for our jail) to hold a bond hearing after an arrest.

Joe Riddley brushed his palms together to get rid of grit that accumulated on our old pine floors no matter how often we swept. “I told them you wouldn’t be available for the rest of the afternoon. Judge Stebley is covering for you.”

“Which means every law enforcement officer in the county will know about this by nightfall. I will
never
live it down.” I was beginning to get cross.

He headed toward the door. “Desperate times require desperate measures. I’ll see you in a while. I need to get back to the nursery.”

“You can’t leave me like this!” I went from not quite cross to furious in one second flat. In that second, I might’ve had the strength to hoist the desk high enough to slide off the cuff, but the anger surged past and left me with panic. “Don’t, Joe Riddley. Anything could happen.” I pictured a tornado raging down Oglethorpe Street with me helpless before it.

He lifted the red Yarbrough cap he always wears, smoothed his hair, and settled the cap back on his head. “I’ve got emergencies covered. Besides, it’s only for an hour or so. Then I’ll come on back and we can go swim.”

“At least tell me who died.” I was stalling for time. How could I convince him this joke had gone far enough?

“I have no idea. A truck went over the embankment and was found sitting tail-up in the kudzu.”

That didn’t help. Practically every family in the county owned a truck.

“Buster got the call while I was driving him back from Rotary Club,” he added.

“So that’s where you got the cuffs.”

Bailey “Buster” Gibbons was not only the sheriff of Hope County but had been Joe Riddley’s best friend since kindergarten. When I started school two years later, the two of them were alternately my champions and my tormentors. They would beat up anybody who tried to bother me, then devil me with practical jokes of their own—a tendency they had never outgrown.

“Please, honey?” I was reduced to begging as he put his hand on the doorknob.

“Little Bit, time and time again I have asked you not to meddle with murder. You have nearly scared me to death with how close you have come to getting yourself killed. I still don’t know how you got sliced up so bad in Scotland.”
²

Unconsciously I flexed my left hand, which the doctor said would always be stiff from that encounter. He noticed. “See? Next time it could be your neck. I married you so we could grow old together. That means you need to be around. Sit tight until Buster gets this body dealt with and I get an order of sod sent out. Then I’ll come back and we’ll swim.”

“I love you. I surely do,” Bo added.

They paused at the door. I had a second’s hope that the old coot was going to unlock me. “You reckon the rage for hawthorn will continue this next year? We might need some more,” he said.

“You and the sheriff are both going to need new heads once I get out of here.” I tugged hard at the cuffs, in case he hadn’t really locked them. They held firm. “This isn’t funny. I’ll put you in jail.”

“I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

With that, he left.

I glared at his back while it receded into shadows as he made his way through the store. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do to get you for this,” I vowed aloud, “but it is going to be terrible.”

I am short, so I keep a stool for my feet under the desk. No matter how I tried, though, I couldn’t back far enough away from the desk to get the stool positioned right to keep that cuff from chafing my ankle raw. Lulu was no help, licking my other ankle as I tried to shove the stool into place.

I pulled the phone toward me and called the cell phone of Isaac James, assistant police chief and my good friend. His office was behind the courthouse, less than a block away.

As soon as I heard his bass rumble over the line, I announced, “This is Judge Yarbrough, and I’ve got a problem here. I’ve inadvertently been cuffed to my desk.”

Isaac’s chuckle filled my ear. “He went through with it, huh? I heard he was threatening to do that.”

“How fast can you get over here to let me out? Then you can go to the nursery and arrest the old codger for false imprisonment.”

“Sorry, Judge, I’m out on the bypass right now, tied up with a wreck. If you really want to press official charges, though, I’m sure Chief Muggins…”

Even Ike was playing dirty. Police chief Charlie Muggins had been trying to pin something on me ever since I got appointed magistrate. I could picture Charlie’s smirk as he came through my door—and as he left without helping me at all.

“I thought Sheriff Gibbons went out on that bypass call.”

“He’s got his wreck and I’ve got mine. A couple of folks were so busy rubbernecking to see what the sheriff’s men were up to, they collided right inside the city limits. It was pretty bad, so I’ll be here a while. If you don’t want me to tell the chief, I can send one of the deputies….”

He knew good and well I would turn down that offer, too. Ike might laugh and let me out, but if he sent a deputy because I’d requested help, I’d have to press some kind of charges. I might be mad enough to want Joe Riddley and Buster both behind bars for a night, but we’d be the laughingstock of Hopemore once the story hit the weekly
Hopemore Statesman
. There are certain disadvantages to living among people who have known you all your life.

“Who died?” I could at least satisfy my curiosity on that point.

“We don’t know yet. They are in the process of winching the vehicle up as we speak. All I know so far is that it’s a black Ford Ranger with a blond person in it wearing a white shirt.”

I heard somebody speak behind Isaac. His voice went muffled for a sentence or two. Then he said, “It’s Starr Knight, the taxidermist’s daughter.”