Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery (16 page)

She headed to a chair and I sank to the couch. “Edie was murdered sometime last night.”

“Murdered? How? By who? How come you didn’t call me as soon as you found out?” Her forehead was a field of furrows. Her lower lip jutted out like a shelf.

“We don’t know who did it. The police are investigating.”

“The po-lice? You mean the sheriff. Whelans live out beyond the city limits.” Clarinda knows law enforcement procedures as well as we do. Maybe better.

I explained about the wreck near the interstate, then added, “Isaac James asked us to go tell Edie’s boss and Josiah. I’m sorry I didn’t call here, but my cell phone battery is dead.”

Clarinda rocked back and forth, holding her face in her hands and moaning, “Jesus, oh, Jesus. Poor Miss Edie. And poor Daisy, too. This will like to kill her.”

Something floated to the surface of my memory. “Aren’t you related to Henry’s mama?”

“Daisy’s mama’s daddy was my mama’s first cousin.” That made Daisy something like Clarinda’s first cousin thrice removed, but you’d have thought Daisy was her sister, the way she propped her hands on her lap, leaned forward with a gimlet stare, and demanded, “You’re not fixing to tell me Daisy and Henry got anything to do with this, are you?”

“Probably not,” I hedged, “but Isaac found a machete that may be the murder weapon, and I saw Henry making a machete last week.”

She gave one of her “that don’t mean a thing” grunts. “Sure he makes machetes. Henry can make anything. But he’d never kill Miss Edie. What cause would he have? The Joyners been working for Whelans since Elijah took off in the heavenly chariot. Some folks say—but never mind that. Just keep in mind that Henry gave up a good job to stay and work the harvest after Mr. Josiah’s stroke. He’d have no cause to kill Miss Edie, if he was the killin’ kind—which he ain’t. Henry’s sweet, underneath that thick skin he developed married to That Woman.” I could see capitals as she spoke the last two words.

She frowned, but it was her thinking frown, not the you-better-watch-out one. “Wonder what’ll happen to the grove now? I sure hope poor Henry hasn’t lost himself a job.”

“My guess is, it still belongs to Josiah, but I don’t know who’ll administer it for him.”

She leaned on her hands again and heaved herself to her feet. “You was busy. I can see that.” It was the closest she would ever come to forgiveness. “But you oughta told somebody to call tell me. What if somebody had called axin’ about the murder, ’cause I work for the judge, and I don’t know a
thing?
You be thinking about that next time.”

“I hope there won’t be a next time.” I went to wash my hands, wishing I could wash the day’s events down the drain.

That awful day wasn’t over yet.

Cindy dragged herself into my office sometime after four, looking like she was trudging through thick, wet mud and about to fall facedown in it. Her makeup hadn’t been renewed for hours, and when she took off her long jacket, I saw that her tan jeans were wrinkled and her brown cardigan was crooked over a pale yellow turtleneck. I’d never seen my elegant daughter-in-law so rumpled.

I’d also never seen her look so weary. She slouched as she crossed the office and sank into the wing chair. Cindy never slouched. Her posture was one of the things I’d admired about her in the years before I started liking her.

I turned gladly from the computer, where I’d been pretending to work on inventory. We still had too many poinsettias. Too much of everything, since that blasted superstore opened. “Have you been over at Genna’s all day?”

She nodded as if that simple act took too much energy. I was touched that she’d chosen to creep into my office to recover. “You were real sweet to stay with her.”

She massaged her temples with both hands, then shoved back her hair, which was so well cut it was still sleek as mink. “I ought to get home. The kids are with friends, but they’ve probably got homework, and I should—” Her voice trembled. “But I can’t. I can’t!” She pitched forward onto her knees, taking great gasping breaths.

I touched her gently on the top of that shining hair, stuck tissues in her hand, and headed for two mugs of coffee to let her grieve in peace. When I got back, she was sitting upright in the chair again, but with her nose red and her eyes wet, she looked a lot younger than thirty-five.

She smiled when I handed her one of the steaming mugs. “Thanks. I’m frozen.” She took a long, grateful sip and exhaled stress in a sigh.

“You are plumb worn out, honey. You didn’t need to stay over there all this time.” I took a swallow of coffee myself, enjoying the warmth running down my throat. I was wearing an extra cardigan I keep at work, and I still hadn’t felt warm enough all day.

She took another sip, followed it with another sigh. “There wasn’t anybody else, not even Olive. She was over in Augusta today doing something about a couch and didn’t hear about Edie until the twelve o’clock news, coming home.”

Cindy stretched out her legs and slid down on her tail-bone. “I thought I could leave when she finally got there, but she talked on and on about some trouble she was having with her decorator, until Genna sent her home. Genna said after she left that it’s bad enough that Olive expects Adney to help her pay for all the expensive stuff she wants, without having to listen to her complain about it. She—Genna, I mean—begged me to stay with her until Adney got home from Birmingham.” The way she sighed, I got the feeling Cindy had been a reluctant Samaritan. “It took ages to find him, then hours for him to get here.” She shoved back her hair again and massaged her scalp with long fingers.

“Find him? Doesn’t he have a cell phone?”

“He woke up late and forgot to turn it on. Genna finally called his boss to see which hospital he was visiting first. By then he was in a meeting, and she got one of those women who exist to make other people’s lives difficult. You know the kind? Said she couldn’t possibly bother Adney, but she’d give him a message when the meeting was done.”

“That’s not just women, honey, it’s the tyranny of petty power. If you give some people even a little power, they feel entitled to club folks with it every chance they get.” There was that word “entitled” again. I hadn’t used it for years, and now it kept cropping up.

Cindy was going wearily on with the story. “Well, that woman at the hospital nearly made Genna crazy. Wouldn’t call Adney. Wouldn’t even listen to what Genna was trying to tell her. Of course, Genna was crying so hard by then, she wasn’t easy to understand. I finally grabbed the phone and said, ‘We have a crisis here and we need Adney Harrison right this minute. If you can’t arrange to put him on the line, Judge Yarbrough will call your sheriff.’ ” Cindy laughed, and I was glad to see her finally relaxing. “She had Adney on the phone in one minute flat.”

“Good for you, honey.” I didn’t bother to point out I have no authority in Alabama. I was honored to have figured so prominently in her plans.

“Maybe,” she said dubiously. Now that the deed was done, I suspected her Southern mama’s credo,
Be sweet, now,
was dumping dollops of guilt on her conscience.

She repeated her sip-and-sigh routine—sort of like a “breathe in the good air, breathe out the bad air” therapy, with the addition of sugar and caffeine. I sipped my own coffee and waited for her to go on. She obviously needed to talk.

“Adney didn’t help much when he did come to the phone. His first words to Genna were, ‘Honey, I’ve told you not to bother me when I’m with a client.’ She started apologizing, then blubbering, so I took the phone again to explain what had happened. Adney was real sorry then, of course. He said she’s always calling him with little things that have gone wrong in the house, and he figured she’d overdrawn their bank account or dented her car. He said he’d go check out of the motel right away, but it was already ten, so he couldn’t get get here until four. I left as soon as he arrived, and as terrible as it sounds, I was never so glad to leave a place in my life.”

She set her empty mug on the floor with a
thunk.
“Bless her heart, Genna is helpless without him. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to eat or not, couldn’t think of anybody she wanted to call to tell about Edie, and she sure couldn’t handle the police. They have hounded her to death, asking the same questions over and over. Did Edie have any enemies? Had she mentioned being frightened of anybody? Genna told them about Valerie and Frank—how she and Olive think they were playing tricks to worry Edie—and the officers said they’d look into that, but then they started asking again where Genna was last night, and if she could prove it. How can you prove you were alone and asleep?” Cindy’s voice rose in indignation. “I told her to call Shep and refuse to say a word until he got there, but Genna said Adney would call him on his way home. I think Shep is coming over a little later today.”

Cindy shifted uneasily in her chair. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but Genna is worried that Edie may have left some of her money to Valerie. Genna knows Edie talked to Shep last week. If Edie did something dumb like that, could Genna contest the will?”

“You can always contest a will. Whether she won or not would depend on what she could prove.” I didn’t think Edie had been incompetent to handle her affairs. Overwrought and stressed out, but not incompetent. “If Edie
was
revising her will this week, though, it’s unlikely she got it signed before she died. And if Valerie and Frank were the beneficiaries, they’d be foolish to kill her before she signed it. I’d advise Genna to stop making suggestions like that. It could backfire. After all, if a new will wasn’t signed yet, the person with the best motive would be Genna.”

Cindy lifted one hand and pressed her lips. “Maybe that’s why the police came back the last time. Adney hadn’t been home fifteen minutes when I left, but the police were pulling in again as I drove away. Do you reckon they know something about the will already?”

“I doubt it. They probably only wanted to talk to him.”

“It’s all so awful!” Cindy laid her head back against the wing chair and closed her eyes. “I keep thinking about poor Edie, dying out there all alone, and I can’t stand it. Thanks for being here. I couldn’t bear to face the kids without this breather.”

“Come anytime.” Why had it taken me fourteen years to learn to appreciate this woman?

She stood. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.” We both grinned at that old saw. Then she winced. “A machete. I cannot bear to think about it, and I can’t seem to think about anything else. They have to find out who did this, or nobody will feel safe in this town.”

She paused at the door. “Will you stop by Genna’s sometime tonight?”

“I hadn’t planned to. I scarcely know them, except as friends of yours.”

“I wish you would, if you can bear it. Nobody else is going over there. They don’t have many friends.”

I could take care of that. As soon as Cindy left, I called a member of our church who was active in several clubs Genna belonged to and also coordinator of a group in the church that takes meals to families in case of sickness or death. I hung up with the comforting knowledge that Genna and Adney would have enough food-bearing visitors to know the community cared.

When I left work for the day, I stopped at Bi-Lo for some fruit, swung by the house for a pretty basket, and tied a jaunty red bow on its handle. Armed with a condolence gift, I headed to High Mortgage Lane.

The subdivision had been built six years before, one of the clones springing up all over America. Genna and Adney’s house was gray stucco with a high arched window in front and steep gables that looked like a roofer’s nightmare. Their lawn, I was glad to see, was thick, green, and weed-free. Yarbrough’s lawn service keeps a pretty yard, if I do say so myself.

I noticed, however, that Genna had set two terra-cotta pots of pansies in the shade when I had specifically told her they needed sun, and she’d planted camellias right in front of her low dining room windows when I’d warned her they would grow ten feet tall. However, they probably wouldn’t live long enough to obscure her view. The short hours of December sun wouldn’t harm them, but by August the western sun would burn them up. Why don’t people find out how big a bush will get before they plant it, and plant it where it gets the proper light?

On the other hand, I could hear Joe Riddley reminding me, “Replacing bushes puts bread on your table, Little Bit. Let them plant where they want to.”

I tried the brass knocker with “Harrison” engraved on it, but nobody came. Shivering in the wind, I waited a decent interval, then punched the doorbell. It rang a full Westminster chime, so they had to know somebody was there. By the time I heard feet running down the stairs, I was wishing I’d brought hot coffee instead of heavy fruit.

When Adney opened the door, I got a whiff of aftershave and saw that his hair was damp and he was barefoot. I hoped I hadn’t dragged him out of the shower. Poor thing, his eyes were red and bloodshot, like he’d cried all the way home, and he had bags under them as big as kiwis.

“Genna’s dressing.” He leaned against the doorjamb and made no move to invite me in, in spite of the cold wind. “Shep Faxon’s coming over in a few minutes to talk. We’d have gotten dressed sooner, but you wouldn’t believe the string of nosy people we’ve had by here in the past hour, bringing food like we were invalids or something.” He caught sight of my basket and had the grace to turn pink.

“Here’s one more,” I joked, thrusting it at him. “You can eat this or give it away.”

“Oh, no, we like fruit. That’s great. I didn’t mean—” He set it inside the front door.

I cut short his misery. “Folks are just trying to say how sorry we are about all this.”

He ran one palm over his hair and down the back of his neck. “I know, and I do appreciate it, really. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? I keep thinking I’m having a nightmare. Edie—” His voice broke. He gave a little cough and said, “Edie was a special lady. I loved her very much.” His mouth creased in the familiar warm grin, but the bloodshot eyes above it did not smile. “That may sound corny, but I don’t have any family except Olive, and since Genna and I moved here, I think I’d gotten closer to Edie than Genna had.” He exhaled a huge sigh. “I keep thinking that maybe if I’d been in town, or if we’d persuaded her to move into a safer place—”