Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (22 page)

Now it was Joe Riddley pounding the table. “You are not to get involved in this investigation! How many times do I have to tell you that?” He automatically moved his arm so Myrtle could set down his plate, but didn’t even give her a glance. She slammed my plate down, glared at me, and swished off.

Myrtle’s husband had died a while back after being puny for years. I had no doubt whatsoever that if I died before Joe Riddley, Myrtle would wear her best hat to my funeral.

We ate in what I think is called stony silence. My dinner certainly tasted like rocks and gravel. I tried a concession. “I’ll dead-bolt the office door from inside, if you’re worried.”

“I’m not worried that Billy will come after you. I think that’s nonsense. It wasn’t our fault that the police found the meth lab. He ought to be grateful that we fed his dog. What I am worried about is that you’ll go haring all over the county looking for a new suspect to replace Grady Handley, and you’ll come on Billy unexpectedly. Leave the detecting to Buster. It’s his job.”

He turned down dessert for both of us, we shrugged on our coats and gloves, and he paid the bill while I waited at the door.

As he stood in line at the register, one of his friends who hadn’t noticed me standing there said, “Tell your wife I said hello.”

Joe Riddley nodded as he stepped up to pay. “As soon as we start speaking again, that is the first message I’ll give her.”

He took my elbow and led me to his car.

“Mine’s right over there,” I protested.

“We’ll get it later. I’d rather drive you back myself.”

“You don’t even trust me to drive three blocks?”

He didn’t answer.

Back in the office he called the sheriff’s office to request an off-duty deputy. I booted up my computer. He sat at his desk reading seed catalogs.

It could have been a normal Monday afternoon. I settled down to work.

When the deputy arrived, I was fixing to tell him where to conceal himself in case Billy showed up when Joe Riddley spoke before I could. “I want you to sit right outside this office door and be sure my wife doesn’t leave for any reason whatsoever—except to go to the bathroom or the Coke machine. Keep your gun handy, in case a man with long blond hair or a man with a dog heads this way, but that’s unlikely. In that case, though, I want you to guard the judge, here, with your life. You got all that?”

“I got it, sir. I’ll watch her.”

The deputy dragged our wing chair out and I heard it creak as he settled himself in it.

“Looks like I’ve hired myself a jailer instead of a protector,” I grumbled after we’d shut the door.

Joe Riddley didn’t look up from his catalog. “You’d better behave yourself, or we might make it a permanent position.”

The phone rang. “If anybody calls you wanting a magistrate this afternoon, I’d rather you stayed at the store,” the sheriff told me.

“I’ve got a jailer outside my door,” I informed him. “I’m not likely to be going anywhere. But it has occurred to me that you might want to look into the whereabouts of Wylie Quarles on Saturday night. He was pretty fond of Starr Knight, and when I saw him at Myrtle’s just now, he sure wasn’t grieving Robin. If he got wind of the fact that she and Billy were making meth and if he knew Starr was using meth, he might have decided Robin had something to do with Starr’s death.”

“It’s an angle worth—”

I felt something at my ankle and heard a familiar
click!

“Buster! Joe Riddley’s cuffed me to my desk again!”

Joe Riddley took the phone. “I’ve got a deputy to keep anybody from getting in, and I’ve fixed it so she can’t get out. You satisfied that she’s safe enough?”

He held out the phone so I could hear the sheriff’s reply. “She ought to be. But if you leave the office, be sure the dead bolt is on.”

“Don’t you tell me how to protect my wife! I’m perfectly capable of—”

I grabbed the phone back. “Stop it, both of you! I will not be treated like—”

Joe Riddley leaned down and spoke into the receiver. “Now buzz off and leave her out of this investigation. Good-bye, Sheriff.” He pushed the button to hang up, then pinched the plastic button to disconnect the handset from my phone. He set it over on his own desk, out of reach.

Something moved outside our window at the edge of my vision. I looked that way, hoping it was somebody looking in who would see what Joe Riddley was doing and come to rescue me, but all I saw was the top of our tea olive moving in the rising wind.

“You can give me my phone back and take off the cuffs now,” I informed him. “I’ve told the sheriff everything I know or suspect. That’s all I plan to do about this.”

“Heard that sort of thing before. As soon as I get down to the nursery, you’ll think of one more thing and head out to help the sheriff a little more.” He reached for his cap. “This is just to keep you here while I run down there to finish up a job. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“You’ve got a deputy guarding my door.”

“Deputies have been known to go to the bathroom. It’s not for long, Little Bit. I’ll take it off as soon as I get back.”

“But what if Uncle Billy comes, and his dog?”

“You have an armed deputy outside your door. No man or dog is going to get to you in the next hour. If it makes you feel better, I’ll leave the deputy the keys to the cuffs and the dead bolt. But don’t you try to make him let you out. He’s incorruptible.”

My ankle felt like it was weighted with iron.

I stooped to begging. “Please don’t leave me like this again. Remember last time? I chafed my ankle so badly I nearly got an infection. I could have lost a foot.”

“Exaggeration will get you nowhere.” Joe Riddley moved over to the filing cabinet and took my lotion out of the top drawer. “However, because I’m a nice guy, I’ll grease you up good. Didn’t Martha say that would keep you from chafing?” He knelt beside me and put lotion on my ankle so thick I’d never get it out of my panty hose, even if they didn’t tear.

I pummeled him on the back with both fists. He got to his feet and reached for a tissue from the box.

“First I was assaulted and now I’ve been robbed,” I noted, glaring at him using my tissue to clean his guilty hands. “I’m going to throw the book at you this time.”

“Not yet you aren’t.” He bent down and pinned my arms beside me while he kissed me. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

I pulled away. “I’ve heard that song before. I didn’t like it the first time and I don’t want to hear it again. Let me go. I hate being tied up.”

“I know. I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for your own good.”

“Your verb tense shows you think it’s a condition that isn’t true,” I pointed out.

“You always were better in English. See you in an hour.” He settled his cap firmly on his head. He turned the key in the dead-bolt lock and, true to his word, left both keys with the deputy.

I checked my watch. One minute down and fifty-nine to go. I jotted the time on a slip of paper on my desk. So help me, if Joe Riddley wasn’t back in one hour, I would pretend to be choking until the deputy came in; then I’d make him give me the telephone and I’d call Isaac down at the police station to go arrest the old coot for false imprisonment.

I fiddled with my right foot until I got the stool under my left. As comfortable as it was possible to get, I realized I wasn’t really out of touch with folks. He’d left me my computer.

I sent e-mails to every member of our family who had an address: “I am being held prisoner in my office. Please notify the authorities or send help.”

Immediately I had a reply from Bethany, but it made no sense whatsoever: “Thnx 4 tha jk. G2g to class. I <3 U. L8tr. B.”

Five minutes later I had a message from Walker, out in Colorado. “Did he cuff you again? Looks like you’d learn your lesson.”

I went back to Bethany’s message and forwarded it to Walker. “Bethany sent this. Can you decode?”

About ten seconds later, our private office line rang—but of course I couldn’t reach it. In another minute, I had another message from Walter. “Where are you? I called the office. Bethany said, ‘Thanks for the joke. Got to go to class. I love you. Later.’ You need to learn the language of text messaging. What was the joke?”

“No joke. She got the same message you did, and believe me, I’m not laughing. Your father also disconnected my desk phone. I am a prisoner, I tell you!”

“At least you ought to get a lot of work done. LoL, which means ‘Lots of laughs.’”

Mumbling imprecations on irreverent sons, I tried to work, but all I could think of was Robin’s death, who might have killed her, and why. I went back over everything I had heard about it and began to form some conclusions. I sent an e-mail to the sheriff. “Come see me, since I can’t come see you. I think I know who killed Robin.”

He didn’t reply.

I sat there fuming, planning ways to get revenge on Joe Riddley for cuffing me again and revenge on Buster for inciting him to do it. First, I needed to get free. “Send me two hefty men,” I prayed out loud, “and help me not to kill both Joe Riddley and Buster when I get out of here.”

The deputy rapped at my door. “Okay if Trevor Knight comes in?”

“Absolutely.” I was delighted. God hadn’t sent two hefty men, but he’d sent one equal to two. Besides, I wanted to talk with Trevor anyway.

“What’s with the dead bolt?” he asked as soon as the deputy had unlocked the door and locked us both inside.

“Joe Riddley’s notion of a joke. It’s too complicated to explain—and too stupid. I take it you haven’t heard about our adventures yesterday?”

He shook his head. “Bradley and I holed up all day yesterday, and I haven’t talked to many people today. Tell me about it. Then I want to ask you a favor.”

“I’ll tell you my story in a minute and you can tell me what’s on your mind, but first, would you do
me
a favor? As part of his prank, Joe Riddley has cuffed me to this desk. I’m really uncomfortable. Do you reckon you could lift it high enough for me to slide the cuff down the leg?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Judge, but the deputy told me if you asked me that, I wasn’t to do it. Joe Riddley’s orders.”

“Why should Joe Riddley’s orders supersede my wishes?”

“Us men gotta stick together.”

“That’s the dumbest reason in the universe for doing anything, but I can see I’m not getting any sympathy. You might as well tell me what’s on your mind.” I waved him toward Joe Riddley’s chair. It would hold his bulk, even though he’d regained most of his weight since Christmas.

He settled in, shuffled his feet, and sat looking at his hands for so long, I wondered if he’d forgotten why he’d come. Joe Riddley used to do that while he was recovering from traumatic head injury. I thought maybe Trevor was suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome after Robin’s death.

It was more than a minute by our office clock before he took a deep breath, let it all out, and said, “Wylie called and told me the sheriff has arrested Robin’s husband for her murder.”

“Not yet. So far he’s just arrested him for trespassing and disturbing a crime scene. He was considering him for the murder, but I think we can prove where he was at the time.”

“Oh. Does Sheriff Gibbons have any other suspects?”

“I think he has been leaning toward that fellow the girls call Uncle Billy—or possibly even Wylie.”

“Wylie? He wouldn’t kill anybody, particularly a woman.”

“Anybody might kill with the right provocation.”

“Well, you got this one wrong, Judge. It wasn’t Wylie.” His body slumped.

I recognized that posture. I’d seen it in the courtroom many times.

“You did it, didn’t you? I figured that out this afternoon.”

Startled, he asked, “How?”

“She couldn’t have been in that elevator long, or somebody else would have found her. The most logical suspects, then, were the folks who actually did find her. Somebody who went back to the parking lot and waited for somebody else to come along heading for the elevator, so he could tag along and pretend to find her. It had to be you or the man with you, who turned out to be her daddy.”

That startled him. “Her daddy?”

“Yeah. Her parents had been looking for her for years, and had finally recognized the work she did on that fox. He certainly had cause to be angry with her, but he is a sick, frail man, without the strength to break her neck. Besides, he was so shocked by her death, he had a heart attack.”

Trevor buried his face in his hands. “Dear, merciful God. And I was the one who let them find her.”

“Bradley said you cried all night long after she died. I figured out you weren’t crying from sadness, you were crying from remorse.”

He nodded, his eyes pink. “I’ll probably cry off and on for the rest of my life. I threw away so much. So much!”

I felt like somebody had taken a huge boulder and stuffed it into my middle. “Why?”

“I found out Robin and Billy were making meth and got Starry hooked. It was also Robin who arranged for Roddy and Slick to kill Starry, because she was going to rat on them.” He didn’t notice he’d reverted to her childhood name. He pounded his thigh with one huge fist. “She tried to tell me not to get mixed up with Robin. Why didn’t I listen?”

There was no answer to that.

“How did you find out?”

“Roddy told me when I went to see him Friday evening.”

It took me a couple of seconds to remember who Roddy was: one of the two men who had killed Starr—the younger one, who had put her in the truck and pushed it over the embankment into the kudzu. “You went to see him?” I was having trouble taking that in.

Trevor seemed relieved to discuss something else for a minute.

“Yeah. I’ve been going to see him every Friday for weeks. When the trial was over—well, I fell apart. Bradley got me back on track. He learned the Lord’s Prayer in Sunday School, and he wanted to say it at every meal. You know that line, ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’? It started working on me. I started thinking how I’ve been scum in my time. I’ve been forgiven a heck of a lot—not only by God but by this community. Heck, I probably understand those boys better than they understand themselves. I know how you can get so low you’ll do anything for your next fix or a drink. I know what it is to believe nobody cares a thing about you. You get to the place where you aren’t even yourself. It’s like there’s something in your gut that is bigger and meaner than you.”

He was hitting his stride now. This was the Trevor we all knew and loved, the man who could address a bunch of high school kids or a bunch of well-heeled donors and hold them in his palm while he told his own story, then made a pitch for them to change their lives or give money to help others change. He could preach it better than anybody I knew.

I didn’t need preaching right that minute. I needed wisdom.
Help!
I winged a prayer.

I motioned for him to stop talking. “I know your story. So you went to tell Roddy you forgave him. Did you go tell Slick, too?” I’ve been a Christian a lot longer than Trevor, but forgiving Slick—well, I was glad I hadn’t been the one tapped for that assignment.

“I told them both, but Slick blew me off. Roddy cried. Told me he never wanted to hurt her, but the only way he could get more drugs was to do what he was told. He never would tell me who ordered him to do it, though. He kept saying that if he confessed or told anybody who they were, they’d get his sister, Charmaine, hooked on drugs. I kept pointing out that if they knew he had a sister, they’d try to hook her anyway. That must have gotten through to him eventually, because on Friday he told me. He begged me to help Charmaine before they get to her, since he can’t do anything from inside. I promised.”

Trevor smiled sadly. “Doesn’t look like I’ll be outside long enough to keep that promise, does it?”

We could deal with the question of Charmaine later. Right now I wanted him to finish what he’d come to say. “Roddy explicitly told you it was Robin and Billy who called in Roddy and Slick?”

“Billy actually called them, but ‘his woman partner’ was the one who told him when to call. Apparently they’d already suspected Starr was going to turn them in. They’d had Roddy and Slick watching her. When Starr called the shop asking to borrow Wylie’s truck to drive to Augusta, Robin figured that was the day.”

“Roddy named Robin?” I asked.

“When I leaned on him a little.”

I was puzzled. “Looks like they would have said something at their trial—especially when she testified.”

“I don’t think they ever saw her. Roddy said Billy took care of the business end and his partner did most of the cooking. But Roddy did know that Billy’s partner had ‘some bird’s name,’ and she worked at the place where her truck was.”

“Did Roddy say how they got Starr to take Robin’s truck, or how he and Slick got Starr to stop the truck for them?”

“They didn’t have to. They were the ones who took Robin’s truck. Billy told them to go by Starr’s and slash her tires, then come get Robin’s truck, go back to Starr’s place as if they were just riding by, and offer her a lift out to Trevor’s to pick up Wylie’s truck. Starr knew them. In addition to using drugs, Roddy and Slick were both selling. They were the ones who usually sold Starr her meth.”

“So they drove her somewhere and killed her.”

“Yeah. The woods near Robin’s house, Roddy said. He swears he didn’t have anything to do with actually killing her, but you can’t believe everything an addict tells you. I’ve told some whoppers in my life. I remember…”

I didn’t want us to get sidetracked onto Trevor’s own story again. “Roddy put Starr in the truck. His prints were on the truck and on her body, while Slick’s were only on the bat.”

“They were both real upset about those prints. Billy had promised there would be latex gloves in the truck, but there weren’t any. I’ve had time to think that over, and I have decided Wylie must have taken them earlier that day, to save himself a trip. We had run out and our order wasn’t coming until Monday, so I’d told him to drive to CVS and get some. He came back almost immediately and said he’d found some in his cab. I think he took them from Robin’s instead, figuring he could replace them before she missed them. Robin was out front talking to a customer at the time, so she wouldn’t have known.”

We sat quiet for a moment, imagining a series of actions unfold that would lead eventually not only to murder but to the discovery of it.

Finally Trevor resumed his story. “Roddy wanted to stop and buy gloves, but Slick was afraid somebody would remember who’d bought them. He told Roddy they’d get rid of the bat and wash the truck real good once they got it over with.”

Trevor looked down at his hands as we both considered what “get it over with” had involved.

“They weren’t supposed to send the truck off the bypass?”

“No, that was Roddy’s mistake. Slick was in his own car by then, following, and Roddy drove the truck. Slick had told him to put the bat in a Dumpster and throw Starr off the bypass. Roddy decided to throw the bat in the kudzu, too. He put the truck in neutral instead of park when he got out to dispose of the bat, and the next thing he knew, to use his own words, ‘that dang truck rolled off the edge before I noticed it was moving.’”

“An act of God,” I murmured. Trevor looked up, startled. “Heaven only knows how long it would have taken to find her body in the kudzu,” I explained. “Instead, the truck was found in a few days and the sheriff thought to look in the same place for the bat. It’s all of a piece with the gloves not being in the truck. Things done in secret will come to light. We are promised that.”

He nodded. “I believe it. Now, what I did in secret needs to be brought to light, too.”

We had arrived at last to the moment we both had been trying hard to postpone. “Why didn’t you tell Sheriff Gibbons what you knew on Friday evening and let him deal with it?”

“I planned to, but I’d made plans to meet friends for a drink and I was running late. Talking to Roddy took longer than it usually did, and driving was slow with the freeze. I figured, ‘No sweat. I’ll talk to the sheriff when I get home, or even tomorrow.’ I didn’t see that there was any hurry. Robin wasn’t going anywhere if she didn’t know I knew. When I started up to my friends’ room, though, this lady in a fur coat was getting on the elevator up ahead. I yelled, ‘Hold it!’ and put on some speed. When I got inside, the woman was Robin, dressed fit to kill. Sorry, that’s not what I meant to say.”

“The language is full of violent images we don’t usually mean. Go on.”

“I said, ‘I’ve just come from talking to your friend Roddy.’ She shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know any Roddy.’ I said, ‘Odd. He said it was you who got Starr hooked on meth.’ And she laughed and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Then she moved closer to me and asked in this husky voice, ‘You like the way I look all dressed up? We could have fun together sometime.’ That’s when I saw red—and it wasn’t her dress. She had killed my daughter, and there she was, trying to vamp me.”