Who Let That Killer In The House? (20 page)

“The person who told, or the person she was talking about?”

“I asked DeWayne that. He said she wasn’t clear on that point.”

I tried to think that out while Yasheika drained the last drops of her wine and set the glass on the table. “I sure wish she had come to me instead of DeWayne. He’s—” She stopped, gulped, and went bravely on. “He
was
shy, and after what happened to him in college, he had a hard time talking about sex at all. Talking about it with a teenager in a miniskirt?” She gave me an impish grin. “Ooo-ee! He said he didn’t know where to look. Besides, he said he had no idea who she might be talking about, and he didn’t want to know private things about her mother, her sister, maybe Bethany, or even me.”

“Bethany?” That upset me so much, I jumped. Poor Red, napping on my toes, gave a low woof of portent.

“Or me,” Yasheika reminded me, “although I don’t know who DeWayne thought I could be sleeping with. I don’t know any guys in town except Ronnie, and we certainly aren’t on those terms.” At least this time she didn’t say his name like it was poison.

She got up and went to wash her plate and glass. “DeWayne worried all evening about whether he’d handled it right. Kept feeling like he’d let her down, that he should have had a good answer when he didn’t.”

“What did he tell her?”

She turned and leaned against the counter. “Said he needed to think it over and he’d get back to her. He wanted me to tell him what to say, because he didn’t have a clue. After what he’d been through, he didn’t want somebody accused of something they weren’t doing.”

I was so bothered that Hollis might suspect—or even know—that Bethany and Todd were messing around, I scarcely noticed when Yasheika picked up my dishes and went to wash them, too. Was that why Hollis had been avoiding Bethany? Should I mention this to Martha?

Yasheika’s chuckle rolled over her shoulder. “The end of their talk was real funny. DeWayne said Hollis flew right off the handle. You know how everything’s either hot or cold with that girl? Well, she said that folks are all the time saying if you think something’s wrong, you’re supposed to tell a grown-up you trust, and he wasn’t helping her at all. Then she flipped her hair at him and stomped out. Poor DeWayne.” I heard a sad smile in her voice.

I got up to put away the milk. “He never talked with her again?”

“Not that I know of, except when he called to tell her she’d made the all-county team. When she made up some excuse not to play, he figured she was still mad.”

That might explain Hollis’s flood of tears. Did she regret the way she’d ended their last conversation?

Yasheika yawned. “I think I can sleep now. Thanks for talking. And please don’t think badly of DeWayne. He never was strong after Daddy went to jail.”

“I don’t think badly of him, honey. He was a fine man with some deadly wounds.” I went to give her a hug. “Starting tomorrow, I will do all I can to help find the person who drove him to do what he did.”

She headed for the stairs, but paused at the door. Her voice was low and venomous. “You better find him before I do.”

19

Sunday I woke early and lay in bed trying to figure out how to casually ask Ridd if DeWayne ever taught Smitty without his suspecting why I was asking. Joe Riddley and the boys get so upset when I investigate things, I have to tiptoe around them the whole time. Mama used to say, “No woman worth her salt lets her menfolk know half of what she
is
doing or a quarter of what she
can
do.” I used to accuse her of being a hypocrite and a manipulator and swore I’d never grow up to be like that. I sure wished now I’d asked her to teach me how.

I also tried to figure out how I could talk to Tyrone. I had a hard time believing he’d have painted DeWayne’s house the night after his hearing, but Smitty seemed to have a strong hold over him. Somehow, we needed to break that hold.

For starters, I had to haul myself out of bed and prove to Clarinda that I could cook.

Ronnie arrived before we finished eating. He didn’t look any more rested than Yasheika did, and she looked as terrible as a pretty girl can look. Wan and weepy. But I noticed her glancing at him when she thought nobody was looking. Finally he took them to Clarinda’s and the rest of us went to church.

Have you noticed that in this entire dreadful week, I hadn’t seen Sara Meg? When she walked into church with Buddy, I felt like one of us must have been on a long trip. According to the bulletin, the youth choir was singing. Garnet always played for them. That morning, Hollis was supposed to sing a solo, but I doubted she or Bethany would appear.

Buddy looked real spiffy in a tan seersucker suit, the kind my daddy used to wear. Poor Daddy never looked that good in his, though. Sara Meg wore a beige linen shirt with huge wooden buttons down the front and a long matching skirt. On me, that outfit would have looked like feed sacks sewn up to clean house in. On her, it looked chic.

I waved for them to come sit with Joe Riddley and me. As they slid into the pew, Buddy leaned across Sara Meg and said softly, “I still can’t get over DeWayne. Everybody’s going to miss him.”

I nodded sadly and swallowed a lump in my throat. “I guess Hollis and the others on the team won’t be singing.”

Sara Meg surprised me. “Oh, yes, they will. Hollis came by this morning for her Sunday clothes. She said all the Honeybees in the choir decided to sing in honor of Coach Evans.”

Listening to Hollis practice octaves hadn’t prepared me for what a lovely voice she had. She opened her mouth and soared on the high notes, her face flushed with pleasure. I leaned over and whispered, “I didn’t know you had
two
musicians in the family.”

Sara Meg glowed with pride. “They got it from Fred,” she whispered back. “We Tanners could never carry a tune.”

During announcements at the end of the service, Joe Riddley looked at me and asked a silent question. We’ve been married so long, I knew what he wanted. I didn’t feel a bit like eating with people, but I nodded, so he wrote a note and passed it to Sara Meg.
Little Bit is feeling rich today. Join us and Ridd’s crew for dinner? Buddy, too.

Sara Meg started to nod, then passed the note to Buddy for his opinion. He smiled their acceptance. A single woman in the pew ahead beamed back, then colored when she realized his smile wasn’t for her.

We decided to eat at a place down by the river and, as we often did, Martha was going to ride with me while Joe Riddley rode with Ridd and Cricket. Bethany decided to ride with Sara Meg, and Buddy told Garnet to come with him so he wouldn’t be lonely. She nodded, then bent impulsively to Cricket, “Would you like to ride with Uncle Buddy and me?”

Cricket abandoned his daddy and granddaddy without a backward look and climbed happily into Buddy’s backseat.

“Didn’t those kids do a fine job this morning?” Martha asked as I headed out of town.

“Yeah, but Bethany, particularly, still looks awfully pale. She seems to be taking DeWayne’s death real hard.”

“That’s not all. She and her daddy had a real row last night. She had told us earlier that she and Todd were going with another couple to a movie, but after she heard about DeWayne, she decided she’d stay with the other girls. When she called Todd to tell him, he got furious. Came down to your place and dragged her out into the backyard to yell at her. Ridd didn’t like that, so he went after them and heard Todd telling her it was going to be a great party and she had to come. That was the first we’d heard about a party. At least Bethany stuck to her intentions and said she needed to be with her team right then, but that made Todd so mad, he took off fast and spun a rut in your driveway as he turned onto the road.”

“I’ll send him a bill,” I joked. The truth was, he could have dug a pit in my driveway if that meant he was too mad with Bethany to come back.

“But that wasn’t the worst. Ridd started reading Bethany the riot act for telling us it was a movie when it was really a party, and she got furious with him for eavesdropping. Then he told her she wasn’t going out with Todd any time he’d been drinking. She insisted Todd hadn’t been drinking and Ridd insisted he had, and they got so loud, I finally ordered them down to the barn. Poor Bo had to listen to them yell at each other for nearly an hour.”

“Anger’s a great way to forget for a little while that you’re grieving,” I reminded her.

“I know. Ridd finally realized that and told her he was sorry. They both came back to the house crying. But Bethany has good cause to be pale. Between her daddy fussing and Todd yelling at her, she had quite a night even without DeWayne’s death.”

Luckily, we had arrived. It sure wasn’t the time to mention that Hollis was worried that somebody she knew was sleeping with somebody else.

The restaurant we’d picked was known for its fried catfish and hush puppies, but the hostess was so skinny, I could have used her shinbone for a needle.

Joe Riddley leaned down and muttered in my ear, “I hope she’s not an advertisement for the quality of the food.” I smacked him lightly, but she hadn’t heard. She was explaining to Ridd that there would be a thirty-minute wait for a table for ten, but they could immediately give us one table for four and one for six.

Ridd waved toward the smaller table halfway across the room. “Okay, kids, you eat there, behave.” I wondered if Garnet would rather eat with the adults, but she seemed happy enough to take Cricket’s hand and go with him.

“We’d better watch those two,” I joked to Sara Meg as we headed to our own table far across the room. “He’s got a serious crush on Garnet.”

Buddy laughed, but Sara Meg said wistfully, “He’d be the first male she ever looked at. I used to picture making my girls prom dresses and wedding gowns, but Garnet has no interest in boys whatsoever. She even skipped her senior prom. And Hollis—” She sighed and shook her head. “Sports, sports, and sports. That’s all she thinks about.”

“Skipped her prom?” That seemed an odd way to put it.

Martha and Ridd had already reached the table and taken chairs across from each other at one end. Joe Riddley had gone around to sit by Martha, so I headed for the chair by Ridd as Sara Meg replied, “She was invited by a real nice boy—”

“—but bad old Uncle Buddy didn’t realize it was prom weekend, so he had rented a condo at the beach,” Buddy finished as he gallantly held my chair. I motioned for Sara Meg to sit by me. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and I wanted her close.

“
Sweet
old Buddy had also found somebody to keep the store Saturday to give me a little break,” Sara Meg added as she sat down, “but Garnet had a choice. I told her we’d let Buddy go alone if she wanted to go to the prom. She said she’d rather go to the beach.” She picked up her menu and added absently, “I was real put out with her, to tell the truth.” She looked at Martha over her menu. “I wanted to see her all dressed up, coming down the stairs.” She sounded so wistful, I wondered if what she really wanted was a memory of her own mother watching her come downstairs in a prom dress. Some hurts never heal.

“You’ve still got Hollis’s prom and two weddings to look forward to,” Martha consoled her.

“And pay for,” Ridd added glumly. We all laughed.

As the waitress distributed our drinks, Buddy looked around the table and said, “This sure is peaceful after a week in the war zone.”

I thought at first he was referring—rather crudely—to the two episodes of graffiti and DeWayne’s death, but Sara Meg gave an embarrassed little laugh and explained, “The girls have been fighting more than usual. Pick, pick, pick at each other, all week.”

“What’s it about?” Martha wondered.

Sara Meg felt around in her purse and brought out reading glasses. “I don’t have a clue. I asked, but you know how kids are. They slide away from questions like fried eggs on a buttered plate. Garnet says she’s tired from summer school and Hollis says she has some stuff to think about that she has to figure out on her own. I tried to make Garnet tell me if Hollis is in some kind of trouble, but Garnet said not that she’s aware of.” Sara Meg tried to laugh again, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Of course, Hollis could be six months’ pregnant before Garnet looked up from her book and noticed. I don’t mean that, of course,” she added quickly.

“I don’t think any of us have any worries on that score,” Ridd assured her.

I held up my menu to hide my face and hoped Hollis
hadn’t
been talking to DeWayne about Bethany. Most of the time I think of myself as a modern mother, but I sure didn’t want to bring that up with Ridd and Martha.

Martha asked, “Does Hollis even have a special boyfriend right now?”

Sara Meg shook her head, and Buddy added, “Not since she stopped hanging around with Tyrone Noland. Boy, that was a relief.”

“He wasn’t a boyfriend,” Sara Meg protested, “just a friend. And he used to be real nice.”

I turned to Ridd and asked softly, “Did DeWayne teach Tyrone or Smitty?”

“Tyrone, yeah, but I don’t know about Smitty.”

I was feeling real clever until I realized that meant it was Tyrone, not Smitty, who might have a motive for murdering DeWayne. Then I didn’t feel good at all.

Our waitress returned and we all ordered catfish, but I pointed out to her that whoever decided to have “all you can eat” that day should have added a footnote: “except for Yarbrough men.”

Martha asked Ridd, “Are you going, or shall I, to make sure Cricket doesn’t order french fries, mashed potatoes, and a baked potato as his three vegetables?”

“You go. I’ve got to stay here and make sure Mama doesn’t embarrass me by telling stories from my childhood.”

“Do you have any influence over your mother?” Buddy asked. “Nobody else does.”

I expected Ridd to laugh, but he gave me a very solemn look. “We’ll see. I’m going to try to influence her. I want her to find out who killed DeWayne.”

Nobody was more surprised than I was. After what he’d said the day before about “poking my nose where it doesn’t belong” and “meddling,” I wanted to bop him.