Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (8 page)

I had better things to do than watch other people chat. “Why would they hurt Starr? Do you know that?” I asked.

Missy hesitated. “She planned to turn them in. They musta found out and got her—just like she was scared they would. Leave it alone, or they’ll get you, too!”

“The sheriff isn’t about to leave it alone, and you know it. He’s going to scour this county, and the whole state of Georgia, if necessary, to bring them in. And so help me God, if you are protecting them—”

Her voice rose again. “I ain’t protecting nobody! I tried to help. I even loaned her my clothes, but look what they did to her!” She stomped around to the other side of the horse and pressed her forehead against its neck, not even pretending to groom the beast any longer, merely using it for support. It stood and twitched, offering what comfort it could.

“Do you know who she was going to talk to?”

She took her time about it, but finally she nodded. “She had a secret meeting all set up with the DEA, over in Augusta. She said that now that Bradley was safe, she could talk. She thought they might help her get clean again and put her in a protection program somewhere. It like to killed her to think about leaving Bradley even for a little while, but once D-Facs took him, she made up her mind. ‘I’m gonna clean up my act and get him back,’ she told me, ‘and then I’m gonna ask them to put us in that witness protection program and send us far away from here.’ It like to killed me to think about losing her like that, but now…she’s gone for good.” The last words were a wail. Missy laid her head on the horse’s neck and bawled.

I gave her time to recover. The sun was warm on my shoulders, the air fragrant with scents I grew up with: horses, pasture, barn. Two horses nuzzled each other by the feedlot fence. The three riders were headed back our way from far across the pasture. The only discordant note in the pastoral scene was over at Trevor’s, where—barely screened by the skimpy forest—the head of the big animal was finally being carried through the double doors.

“Do they often unload them outside like that?” I asked, trying to introduce a more neutral subject.

Missy looked over her shoulder as if she hadn’t noticed the activity next door. Her shrug confirmed that it was a common occurrence. “They have to. Can’t drive a truck into the shop. They even butcher deer out there, if somebody wants the meat for eating. Too many chemicals inside, Mr. Knight says.”

“I don’t guess any of you saw Starr take Robin’s truck that day, did you?”

She blinked and fumbled in her jeans pocket for a tissue. “Starr wouldn’t take Robin’s truck. She hated that woman.”

“Why?”

“She never said.” Missy sniffed. “My mom claimed Starr was afraid Robin would marry Trevor and they’d get custody of Bradley. That might have been it. I know she wouldn’t let him play with Robin’s girls, and they’re sweet kids.”

“Maybe if she hated Robin, that’s why she took Robin’s truck—to hassle her.” I was fumbling in the dark and we both knew it.

Missy shook her head. “Starr wouldn’t drive a vehicle with an automatic transmission. She had a big thing about that. Said they were for wimps and sissies. Besides, Uncle Jacob saw two men at her truck—”

She broke off and gave me the glare of somebody who’d been tricked into saying more than she had intended. “He won’t talk to the sheriff. You’d be wasting your time sending him out here to try to talk to any of my family. We stay clear of the sheriff and he stays clear of us.”

“You could at least go tell him where Starr was headed. Was she wearing your clothes?”

She gave me a grudging nod. “I told her she needed to look respectable for them to take her serious.”

Without meaning to, I glanced down her muscular torso, which was several sizes larger than Starr’s. Correctly reading my expression, she added hotly, “The pants had an elastic waist. They were a tad big, but they didn’t fall off her.”

I remembered that the deputy had said the pants were baggy. I wondered if either the sheriff or the coroner—both males—had considered the significance of the fact that Starr’s clothes were too big.

Missy had another concern. “Don’t tell Trevor. I don’t want him to pay for them, or nothing.”

“I won’t tell Trevor, but you do need to tell the sheriff.”

I had spoken in the process of leaving, so my words were louder than usual. A voice called from the barn, “You haff trouble, Missy?” The accent was heavily German.

I looked up and saw the double of the man around front—except this man’s hair was silver. He stood in the shadows that filled the doorway, carrying a pitchfork in one beefy hand. He stepped into the light like Goliath, broad of back and thick of thigh. David’s taunt echoed in my brain:

I didn’t feel real confident at the moment that I did come in the name of the Lord. Maybe I came in the name of my own curiosity. Maybe this giant German had been sent by God to drive me away. Maybe Sheriff Gibbons had everything under control. Maybe I ought to get on my horse and ride into the sunset.

I couldn’t leave without a low warning. “Tell the sheriff what you know. It’s the only protection you’ve got.”

Her glasses reflected the light of the sun so I couldn’t see her eyes. “I don’t know nothing! You got that? I don’t know a dad-blamed thing.” She grabbed the reins of the old horse and led it away.

The rest of the weekend I wondered if Missy had called the sheriff, or if my visit had accomplished nothing except ruining my whitewalls.

Sunday afternoon I said to Joe Riddley, “How about we invite Buster to join us at Dad’s Bar-be-que tonight?”

“You planning to interrogate him about Starr’s murder investigation?”

“Don’t be silly. We haven’t had a chance to enjoy a good meal together for weeks, and it’s finally cool enough to eat outdoors again.”

A stiff breeze had even driven off the gnats and mosquitoes, so when we got our plates, I suggested we eat at a distant table under the trees. I congratulated myself on finagling it so we were out of earshot of other diners without arousing Joe Riddley’s suspicions—until he set his tray on the table. “Okay, Buster, fill us in. Little Bit’s ears are flapping.”

Buster’s bloodhound face looked as mournful as I’d ever seen it. He swung his long legs across the bench and settled himself on one side of the picnic table. He poked at the coleslaw on his plate with a white plastic fork, looking for all the world like he was hunting clues in its mayonnaise. He took a bite and chewed it slowly. He snailed a handout for his sliced-beef sandwich and unwrapped it as carefully as if it were fine crystal. I expected us all to die of old age before he said a word.

I attacked my pulled-pork sandwich to keep from smacking him.

He swallowed, took a swig of Coke, and said, “Forensics folks think Starr was killed on Monday or Tuesday, although with the car windows rolled up in that heat, it was hard to tell. Nobody has come forward to admit they were walking out on the bypass last week before the cleanup crew found her on Thursday, and the vehicle wasn’t visible to drivers. It could have been there all that time. My hunch is that she met up with somebody who provided her with drugs, that she reneged on paying him, he followed her home, managed to get her to stop, and killed her.”

I gave him a minute to take another bite before I asked, “Have you talked to Missy Sanders?”

Joe Riddley stopped chewing and fixed me with a stare that used to make defendants before his bench quiver in their boots. “What does Missy Sanders have to do with anything?”

Fortunately, I’ve known him too long to quiver, and I was wearing sandals. “I ran into her yesterday, and she said Starr had borrowed her clothes just before she was killed, and that Starr was going to talk with some Drug Enforcement Agency people.” That got their attention. I filled them in on what Missy had said. “I told her to go talk to you, Buster, but I guess she didn’t.”

“Not that I’ve heard, but I’ve been fishing all weekend. I had just gotten home when you called to ask me to supper.” He frowned. “I sure wish Starr had talked to me. We suspect there’s a meth lab somewhere in the area, but haven’t a clue where to look. Nobody’s buying any supplies they shouldn’t, and every lead we’ve gotten has fizzled out.”

“Maybe Missy can help you.”

“Not if all she knows is where Starr was going and why she dressed the way she did the day she died.”

“It’s a beginning, Buster. She was probably killed by whoever was supplying her with drugs. Now if we—”

Joe Riddley slammed one fist down on the table and roared. “Stay out of it, Little Bit!” I think he was as astonished as we were, because he swallowed and said in a normal voice, “The sheriff can take it from here.” He stood. “I’m getting some more tea. Anybody else need some?” I held up my paper cup and he strode off.

“He’s really worried, you know,” Buster said unnecessarily. “Those boys are dangerous. He doesn’t want you to get hurt again.”

“I’m not going to get hurt, because I’m not getting involved. The only thing I want to know from you is whether or not you’ve found anything that points to a suspect.”

He didn’t say a word, just sat there eating his sandwich.

I gave him plenty of time to speak. Finally I said, “I wonder why Starr was out on the bypass. She wouldn’t have used it to drive to Augusta, either from her house or from Trevor’s. How did anybody lure her out there to kill her?”

“She wasn’t killed out on the bypass.” Buster finished his sandwich, wiped sauce off his hands and chin, and took a swig of his drink before he followed up on that bombshell. “We’ve been over every inch of the dirt on that roadside, and there wasn’t a speck of blood. None at her place, either, so she wasn’t killed there.”

“Was she killed in the truck?” When I was a child, some slaughterers had fetched my favorite calf from Daddy’s farm and beat it to death with the head of an axe in the back of their truck, while my little brother, Jake, and I watched. Daddy never used them again, but that didn’t erase the memory. It still made me sick to my stomach to remember. I pushed my plate away.

“She wasn’t killed in the truck and she wasn’t killed out at her place. Both of them were clean. We have no idea where he killed her.” Buster tore open the wet wipe that Dad thoughtfully provides with sandwiches just as Joe Riddley came back with our tea.

“Did you solve it while I was gone?” he asked.

“Nope,” I griped. “Buster just mentioned some ‘he’ who killed her, but he’s being as close as a clam.”

Joe Riddley sat down, took a swig of tea, and said, “You might as well tell us, Buster, or she’ll keep us here all night. I heard a couple of mosquitoes on my way back out.”

I was dying to press him:
So who is it, Buster? How’d you find him? Anybody we know?
I settled for a harmless question: “Why haven’t I seen a warrant?”

Before he got around to answering, he had to finish his drink and neatly fold up all his paper. Sometimes Buster is too finicky to live. At last he said, “Judge Stebley was down at the detention center for a bond hearing Friday when the word came in, so I asked him to issue the warrant. The alleged perp is a kid of nineteen from Hall County, who was arrested up there a year ago for possession with intent to sell. He got probation, but he must have moved on to bigger stuff, because his conviction was for marijuana and Starr had been using meth. She was nearly eaten up with it. We identified him because he left some prints that matched up. His name is Roddy Howell.”

That didn’t answer all my questions, by a long shot. “Have you talked to the guy?”

“Nope. We’re still looking for him.”

I pinched one of Joe Riddley’s fries, hoping salt might help settle my stomach, which was still queasy from remembering the slaughter of Daddy’s calf. “It’s great that you’ve identified him, though.”

He sighed. “Yeah, but all we can get him on is accessory to murder. He left enough prints on her body to show he lifted her into the truck, and some in the truck as well, but there’s nothing to tie him to the actual beating.”

“What about the weapon?” As I spoke, I saw a glower in Joe Riddley’s eyes. “I’m not investigating,” I protested. “I’m expressing interest in what Buster has to say. Given the kind of thug this kid probably is, I have no inclination to get any closer to him than the other side of my bench.”

Joe Riddley sucked up the last of his drink in that noisy way he knows annoys the dickens out of me. “You might as well tell the rest of it, Buster. Have you got any leads on the weapon?”

He might act like Mr. Cool, but I suspected he was as interested as I was.

“Not yet. There’s evidence the weapon was in the back of the vehicle for a time—behind the front seat where the jump seats are, not in the bed—but it wasn’t there when we hauled the danged thing up.”

“They could have thrown it into the kudzu before pushing the car over,” I suggested.

Buster gave an unfunny laugh. “You know how long it would take to search that much kudzu? Not to mention how many snakes we’d meet in the process.”

Joe Riddley had finished his ribs and was positioning a slice of lemon icebox pie as his next victim. With fork poised, he paused long enough to point out, “The stuff’s deciduous. They might not have thought about that.” Having said all he planned to say, he turned his full attention to his pie and changed the subject to Georgia’s chances in the current football season.

I reached under the table and patted his knee to thank him for helping Buster solve the case. Until he did, folks would keep jumping at every noise and looking over their shoulder half the time, expecting a baseball-bat murderer.

When Starr’s body was released, we turned out in force to pack Trevor’s church for the funeral. Two odd things happened that morning. First, Robin and her girls sat in the pew with Trevor and Bradley. Second, Wylie glared at me off and on during the whole service.

It occurred to me that if I could hear Trevor from Missy’s place, folks down at Trevor’s might have heard Missy. Had that been Wylie out in the yard with Trevor, carrying in the big animal? Had he overheard what Missy shouted at me? An ex-boyfriend turned out to be the killer in a whole lot of cases. Had he known the kid the sheriff was trying to find? I considered his anger and grief over at Trevor’s, and wondered if he’d ever done any acting.

At the reception in the fellowship hall afterwards, I overheard two women talking. One said, in a gravelly voice, “I saw that pitiful man and his grandson wandering the aisles of the Bi-Lo yesterday, and I ached for them both.”

The second voice was sweet and high. “Why on earth would they need groceries? Folks are keeping their larder stocked.”

“Yes, but who takes a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs to a grieving family? You can eat only so much ham and potato salad.”

They glanced across the room to where Trevor was shaking hands and trying to be pleasant to people when he would obviously have preferred to be alone with his grief. The first woman heaved a sigh. “I wonder if Trevor is eating at all. He seems to have fallen off considerably since Starr died.”

The other reached over and patted her arm. “Go talk to him, honey. You know what they say: The best way to catch a husband is to wear your prettiest hat to his wife’s funeral. You’re looking fetching today. Go on, now. Give him a smile.”

Poor Trevor. It wasn’t Starr whom the vultures were circling.

The next morning I had enough distractions to forget Starr’s murder for a time. Lulu and I arrived at the store to find Evelyn so excited that her face was bright pink. “Look!” She sported a big button that featured a beaming Hubert encircled by a red doughnut with white words:

SPENCE MAKES SENSE
.

I bit my tongue to keep from retorting, “Spence makes nonsense.”

“Aren’t they the cutest things?” She craned her neck, trying to read her own chest.

“Cutest thing I’ve seen all day,” I allowed, “but I’m not sure we need a cute mayor.”

“Oh, but Mr. Spence really does know how to run things. He’s run that store for—how many years? And he’s got great plans for Hopemore.” She was breathless, giddy. Sounded to me like Hubert had been handing out charm with his buttons. I also suspected that this was the closest Evelyn had ever come to hobnobbing with a celebrity.

“Running a store isn’t exactly the same as running a town.” I glanced out the front door. “Speaking of running a store, shouldn’t you put the bedding plants on the sidewalk? It’s almost nine o’clock.”

“Oh!” She hurried to pick up a tray of asters. “I was fixing to put them out when Mr. Spence stopped by. He left a whole box of buttons for us to give out to folks.”

I hated to disappoint her, but it was time she remembered the facts of life. “We can’t endorse Hubert. I’m a judge. I can’t endorse any candidate.”

She looked confused. “Will the poster be all right?”

“What poster?” I had come in the side door from the parking lot, as usual. When she made a helpless motion toward the front, I made tracks out onto the sidewalk. In our front window was Hubert’s face, big as life and twice as ugly, beaming above his
SPENCE MAKES SENSE
slogan.

Lulu must have recognized him, because she climbed up on her hind legs and tried to lick him through the glass.

“Sorry, but the poster has to go. I’ll get a rag to clean off the dog spit.”

Evelyn’s only response was to carry out another flat of asters and slam them onto the sidewalk in a manner calculated to do permanent damage to their roots.

“Why don’t you take it home and put it in your window?” I suggested as I wiped down the glass and discouraged Lulu from making another attempt at reaching Hubert. “Politicians kiss babies and dogs,” I informed her. “Not the other way around.”

I was inside removing the first piece of tape when I saw Hubert bouncing down the sidewalk. That’s the only word I can think of to describe how he was walking. He could have been traveling on air cushions. His eyes, of course, went straight to the poster—and me removing it. His face flipped from surprised to mad in two seconds flat. Hubert’s temper was legendary in town.

He stormed into the store. “What you taking my poster down for? I paid good money for that sign.”

I spoke as calmly as I could. Hubert’s temper, coupled with his blood pressure, had already been catastrophic to his health once. “I’m a judge. You know I can’t endorse a candidate.”

That didn’t mollify him in the least. “You ain’t endorsing me. You can put up a poster for that housewife, too, if she ever manages to get her act together and print up some. We can face off over the flowers.” He motioned toward a new display Evelyn had created Saturday, a green wheelbarrow full of mums in bronze, yellow, and white.

I shook my head. “Sorry, Hubert. I would if I could, but I can’t.” I’d heard that line in a song when I was a child, and it had stuck with me ever since.

He slicked back his hair and let out a huff of frustration. “You’re as bad as Maynard. He won’t let me put a sign in his window, either. Says it’s bad for business to endorse one candidate over another. But folks gotta stand up for what they believe! We can’t be wishy-washy in these perilous times!” He smacked one fist into the other palm.

Lulu yipped and danced in delight. This was more exciting than the store generally was.

Underneath Hubert’s anger and bluster, I saw the hurt. “Evelyn could take it home and put it in her window,” I told him. “She lives out on the far end of Oglethorpe Street, right near the superstore. You’d get a lot of traffic past there.”

Why was I trying to help Hubert, when I wouldn’t vote for him unless he was the only candidate running against Hitler? Because friendship is one of the strangest relationships in the world. It makes us do all sorts of things we would never do for either strangers or family. If it had been my brother running (and if Jake were as obstreperous as Hubert), I’d have done all in my power to talk him out of running, and I’d have told him exactly what I thought of his capacity to administer the town. Yet here I was trying to help Hubert with his campaign because I hated to hurt his feelings.

“I’ll be glad to put the poster in my window,” Evelyn told him as she came in from arranging the sidewalk display. “And if you’ve got signs on sticks, I’ll put one in my yard. If you have bumper stickers, I’ll take one of those, too.”

He snatched the poster from me and trotted over to thrust it toward her. “Here. If you want more, let me know. I hadn’t thought of bumper stickers.”

Evelyn looked up at him earnestly. “Don’t get the permanent ones—they hurt the paint. Get the kind that peel on and off, or work with magnets. I’ll bet lots of people would take one. I’ll be glad to help you distribute them. I think it’s wonderful that you’re running, Mr. Spence.”

He turned pink and stretched to his full five-foot-six. “Call me Hubert,” he said gruffly. “I’ll bring over a sign later. And I’ll think about the bumper stickers.”

Evelyn raked both hands through her hair—which was a lot more attractive mahogany than it had been carrot orange. Then she realized what she was doing, patted it down, and blushed.

Hubert looked over his shoulder at me. “I guess you won’t be handing out my buttons, either?”

“Nope. Sorry. Evelyn can wear hers, though.” I was hazy about whether that was legal, but we would presume it was until somebody told me otherwise.

“I’m planning to run to the superstore during my lunch break,” Evelyn told him. “I could stand on the sidewalk out there and hand out buttons for half an hour. And bring me a trunk full of signs. I’ll go out after work and put them on the right-of-way of every road into town. You can’t put up too much publicity.”

Sounded to me like Hubert was quickly getting himself a campaign manager. He could do a whole lot worse.

An hour later Slade Rutherford, editor of the weekly
Hopemore Statesman
, strolled into my office, notepad and pen in hand. “Hubert Spence has charged that while judges aren’t supposed to endorse candidates, you are showing partiality to—and I quote—‘that housewife who thinks she knows how to run Hopemore.’ You got any rebuttal to make?”

I exhaled a long breath of relief and disgust. “None that’s fit for the printed page. But let me say for the record that I’m not showing partiality to anybody. I told Hubert I can’t put his campaign poster in our window because I’m a judge. He suggested I put one for both candidates, and I turned that down for the same reason. End of story. You’d better get that right, after the story you wrote last summer on the investment club murder, or I’ll hang you up by the fingernails and let Ridd’s pig nibble your toes.”

“Ouch.” His loafers bulged as he curled his toes under. “I take it Hubert is referring to Nancy Jensen?”

“Right. And between us, the paper might do worse than endorse her.”

He tapped his pen on his notebook. “I’m between a rock and a hard place. Last summer, Horace Jensen and Middle Georgia Kaolin contributed more than half the cost of the summer camp our paper sponsored for needy kids. We want to run another camp this summer, so I don’t like to rile Horace, and he’s not feeling too charitable toward Nancy right now. Have you heard she’s suing him for more than half their financial worth?”

“I believe the argument her lawyer is putting forth is that his ability to make more money than she can is an ‘intangible asset’ he is taking out of the marriage, so she deserves more cash.”

“Horace isn’t going to like that.”

“Horace doesn’t like much of anything, or anybody—except someone we don’t need to name. That’s not for publication, either. I’d be willing to bet, though, that the reason his company contributed to your summer camp was because Nancy told him to, so you’d better think about where your donations are likely to be coming from in the future before you decide who to endorse.”

Slade shifted in his chair, a sign he was thinking about what I was saying, so I pressed on. “At least get to know Nancy better. She’s an intelligent woman with a number of interests, and I think she’s going to bloom once she’s divorced. Besides, if you don’t endorse her, who are you going to endorse? Hubert?”

“It’s a tough call,” he conceded.