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

“Is Wylie equally good?”

“No, but he’s not bad if he could learn to stitch a straight seam.”

“He seems real cut up about Starr.”

“They’d been dating some. I wish…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, or need to. I was sure he had a number of regrets. Anybody who has lost a loved one does.

I laid a hand on his arm. “The sheriff is going to find the perpetrator, Trevor. I know it’s been a long time from your perspective, but he’s going to get him.”

In the distance, we heard a flock of geese. We both craned our necks and watched until they appeared. They flew directly overhead, startling a flock of birds that burst into the sky like confetti.

“Good-bye.” I started my engine. He didn’t say a word.

As I pulled away, Trevor was still watching the geese—mere specks by then—with a look of longing on his face.

Martha claims that what happened next was an act of God. If so, it only goes to show that God can use anything, even greed and pride, to accomplish good.

All I had on my mind was getting to Myrtle’s Restaurant before Joe Riddley ate my meat loaf. There were two ways to Myrtle’s from Trevor’s, but downtown would still be full of people from the Halloween revelry. I chose the back way, down by the railroad tracks, to avoid what my eleven-year-old grandson calls “Hopemore’s rush minute.”

As I approached the water tank down near the tracks, I slowed to admire it. It was freshly painted white, with
HOPEMORE
stenciled on it in big red letters. Privately, I took credit for the improvement.

The water tank stands in the middle of an asphalt parking lot that used to serve several businesses down by the tracks. As the businesses closed, the tank and its lot were ignored, until the tank, which had gradually faded to soft blue, sat surrounded by an out-of-control privet hedge, broken asphalt, and high weeds. A year before, Lulu and I had found the body of a homeless person under that tank,
⁶
and for a brief time the Hopemore water tank dominated national news. After city leaders noticed how pathetic that tank looked, they authorized funds to paint it and replace the hedge with a chain-link fence and a padlocked gate. In the unlikely event that the water tank ever got its picture on national news again, it would accurately represent our fine town.

I drove along with my windows down to enjoy the cooler October air and the sight of the spruced-up tank. In spite of the padlock and fence, however, somebody had gotten inside the gate and littered. A heap of white lay crumpled at the base of the ladder.

As I got nearer, I heard shouting.

“Help! Please! Somebody, help!” That’s when I noticed Evelyn, halfway up the narrow ladder leading to the base of the tank. She stood with both arms extended, leaning far back. Between her and the ladder was something I took for a full feed sack. Not until I drove as close as I could get did I realize the sack was Hubert.

I grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. “Send somebody to the water tank, pronto,” I told the emergency operator. “Somebody’s climbed up the ladder and gotten into difficulties.”

“Right away, Judge. We’ll get you down. Don’t worry.”

I didn’t notice until after I hung up what she had said. Not only did she think it was me up that tank, but she hadn’t sounded the least bit surprised.

The gate stood open. I hurried through it and called up to Evelyn, “Help’s on the way. Has he fainted?”

“Of course I ain’t fainted,” Hubert raged. “I’m just a mite dizzy, that’s all. Can’t seem to make my feet and hands work right.”

“I’ve called for help,” I yelled. “What were you doing up there?”

“None of your dadgum bidness.”

“Please, help me.” Evelyn sounded like she was at the end of her tether—or the end of her arms. I saw now that the reason she was leaning out so far was that she was pinning Hubert to the ladder so he wouldn’t fall.

“Hubert,” I called sternly, “can you come down one rung?”

“I can’t move at all,” he bawled. “Everything is going round and round.”

“It may be his heart,” Evelyn cried.

“Or a wide streak of yellow up his spine. Hubert Spence, you listen to me. Evelyn’s about to fall off that ladder holding on to you, and she’s running out of strength. You’ve got to help her. You hear me? Now, Evelyn, I want you to ease down one step. Hubert, when she starts to move, you ease with her. Can you do that?”

“Mac’s down there if we fall,” Evelyn added.

I backed away. I had no intention of getting squashed. Besides, I felt dizzy myself, craning my neck like that.

Evelyn’s foot felt for a lower rung. As she started to descend, Hubert whimpered, but I saw his foot leave the safety of its rung and begin to feel for the one below.

One foot, one hand, at an excruciatingly slow pace, the two of them descended. I could hear Hubert’s labored breathing and worried about his heart in spite of what I’d said. He had no business being up that ladder.

They were halfway down when we heard a siren approaching.

“What’s that?” Hubert’s voice was full of panic.

“They are coming to help,” I called up. “But you all are doing fine.”

“I’m gonna fall,” he cried.

I got an inspiration.

“Hang on one minute more, and they’ll be here with a net. You can jump. It can’t be more than fifteen feet now. Maybe ten.”

“I ain’t jumping into any net. Get out of my way, Evelyn. I can come down by myself.”

Evelyn climbed the rest of the way down, keeping a careful watch on Hubert. With renewed vigor he made his way down the last few feet. By the time the rescue crew pulled to a stop at the fence, they were both back to earth, but they were trembling and his face was a terrible shade of gray. I wasn’t sure how long he could stand.

“You okay, Judge?” called one of the crew members, hurrying my way with a stretcher. “We got word you were up the water tank.”

“Not me. Hubert. I think he could use a check-over at the hospital. Evelyn, too.”

“I’m okay,” Hubert insisted, but he could hardly breathe. Within seconds, the techs had him safely in the back of their vehicle.

I put one arm around Evelyn to steady her. “What on earth made Hubert climb that tank?”

She bent and picked up one end of the dropped cloth. “This.” She shook it out and I saw it was a long banner, designed to hang from the top of the ladder and cascade down like a waterfall. At the top, Hubert’s face would have beamed over the town while large red letters proclaimed,

SPENCE MAKES SENSE
.

Evelyn rode with Hubert to the hospital. I called Maynard. He and Selena were at an antique show down in Dublin, but he said they’d come to the hospital as fast as they could. Given how long it would take to process Hubert and Evelyn in the emergency room, I figured I might as well go eat my dinner.

When I walked in, folks started laughing, clapping, and shouting, “What-a-go, Mac! You go, Judge!”

When I slid into the booth across from Joe Riddley, he asked, “What were you
doing
up that tank? You said you were coming straight here.”

“Who told everybody I was up that tank?” I took an angry swallow of tea and glared around at the other patrons.

One of the deputies raised a sheepish hand. “That would be me. I was near the operator’s desk when you called.”

“You owe me an apology and my dinner. I called to say that somebody else was up the tank.” I spoke loudly enough to be heard by everybody there. “It wasn’t me.”

I could tell from the way folks bent over their plates that they didn’t believe me. I would never get that story straight in some people’s minds.

“Here’s your dinner.” Myrtle slid a plate in front of me. “Joe Riddley asked me to keep it warm. We figured you’d need something hot in your stomach after the shock.”

I was torn between being grateful for their thoughtfulness and mad that they thought I was dumb enough to climb the tank. I was so hungry, I decided to go with grateful.

Martha was down visiting Bethany with Ridd and Cricket, but when we went by the hospital after lunch, we spoke to an emergency room nurse named Kate. She told us, “Hubert’s heart is fine. He simply had a panic attack, but the doctor wants to keep him overnight for observation. It’s Evelyn who is in pain. She sprained both arms somehow.”

When I explained what Evelyn had done, Kate stared. “She held him up all that time? No wonder she’s sore! The doctor told her to go home, take painkillers, and rest, but she insists on staying with Hubert until Maynard gets here, and she says she has to work this afternoon.” That nurse had known us all her life, but she looked at Joe Riddley and me like we were monsters who kept employees locked in a windowless sweatshop and let them out only at night.

“When will Maynard get here?” Joe Riddley asked.

Kate checked her watch. “He ought to be here in another half hour at the most.”

“Tell Evelyn I said she’s to take today and Monday off, and see how she feels then. We’ll manage without her. She did a very brave thing.”

I asked permission to go back and see Evelyn briefly in the cubicle where Hubert was waiting for a room. He was snoring. She was sitting in a straight chair with both arms in slings, propped on pillows on her lap. Her face was so pale that her freckles stood out like constellations. Sweat beaded her upper lip.

When she saw me, her eyes filled with tears. “It was all my fault!”

I laid a hand on one shoulder, but took it off when she winced. “You weren’t the one starting up that ladder with a banner.”

“No, but I suggested that a banner hanging from the water tank would get a lot of attention. I even called my sister and got permission to hang it.”

Evelyn’s sister was somebody important down at the water company.

“She told me that Hubert could put up a banner, but that if other candidates requested equal time, we’d have to work out a schedule. And she gave me the key to the gate.” She started to put one hand up to rake it through her hair, then winced again and dropped her arm.

“Have you taken anything for pain?”

“No. They gave me a prescription, but I wouldn’t let them give me a shot. I can’t drive all woozy. I’ll get the prescription filled later, after Hubert’s son comes. I don’t like to leave him alone. I sure would like some water, though.”

I went and fetched her some, then held the cup while she drank. “Hubert is feeling no pain. He won’t care whether somebody is here or not.”

“I don’t like to leave him. He might wake up and not remember where he is.”

Never try to discourage martyrs. It makes them more adamant. “Have you had lunch?”

“I’m not hungry.” It was a lie. We could both hear her stomach growling.

“How do you plan to get home when you can leave?” If she and Hubert had walked down to the water tank from our store, her car must still be in our parking lot.

“I’ll walk to the store and get my car.”

“No way you are going to walk nearly a mile with those sore arms. Give me your keys and call when you’re ready to leave. I’ll send somebody over to get you, and if you’ll give me the prescription, I’ll get it filled. You stay home until you are no longer in pain. You hear me?”

“But we’d planned to put up yard signs this evening.” She cast Hubert an anguished glance. “Do you think he’ll be up to running after this?”

I reached over to catch one of her hands and squeeze it, but had second thoughts and stroked Hubert’s sheet instead. “I don’t know, but he’s a tough old bird. We’ll have to see how he feels when he’s had time to recover. He never should have gone up that water tank.”

She sniffed and grabbed a tissue from a box on Hubert’s nightstand. “I know. I told him I’d do it, but he said he’d climbed that tank a hundred times as a kid.”

“He lied. We weren’t allowed to climb that tank as kids. The only time I know of that he went up that ladder was when he painted a big heart on the tank at the end of his and Joe Riddley’s senior year in high school, with ‘Joe Riddley loves MacLaren’ in the middle.”

“Really?” Her eyes kindled with misplaced adoration.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was Hubert until last year, or he wouldn’t have lived this long. Now, give me that prescription so I can send somebody back with pain pills. You look like you need them.” As I closed the curtain to the cubicle, I saw her watching Hubert with tenderness.

I stopped by the nurses’ desk and asked if they could get her a milk shake and something to eat. “Put it on Hubert’s bill. She’s working on his campaign.”

When I got back to where Joe Riddley was waiting, I said, “You know, Evelyn’s probably twenty years younger than Hubert, but both of them could do a whole lot worse. And if they got married, she could move in with Hubert and solve Otis’s problem.”

Joe Riddley draped an arm around my shoulders. “I can’t see Evelyn taking care of Gusta, can you? So why don’t we let them recover from this present crisis before you precipitate another one.”

As soon as the Halloween festival weekend was over, all the downtown lampposts sprouted gold wreaths with red bows. The sheriff called me around ten on Monday morning.

“I’ve got an important question, Judge. Is Joe Riddley gonna boycott the lighting ceremony tonight? I was at a breakfast meeting this morning, and folks were laying bets about when he’ll turn them on. I want to know how safe my money is.”

At six p.m., Hopemore would have our traditional turning on of the lights, when downtown merchants flipped switches to outline all their roofs so the town looked like a toy village. For the past five years, however—since the chamber had voted to kick off Christmas right after Halloween instead of after Thanksgiving—Joe Riddley had refused to start the Christmas season that early, making our store stand out like a six-year-old’s missing tooth.

“We’ll turn them on tonight. I’ve argued him down this year. I want to celebrate this Christmas as long as we can.”

The sheriff had known me too long not to know what I was thinking. “You afraid it may be your last one in the store?”

I had to swallow a lump in my throat before I could answer. “Four generations of Yarbroughs have managed to keep some sort of business going in this location, but we are speedily losing ground. I cannot bear to think of this old building turned into another dollar store, real estate office, or shop carrying antiques no older than we are.”

He laughed. “Sounds like my money is safe, then. I knew you’d bring the old coot around. We could use some bright lights this winter. The place has been a bit gloomy.”

“Folks who kill other folks with baseball bats have that effect on people.”

The whole town was getting more and more nervous as the weeks dragged on and nobody was caught in the Starr Knight murder case. I’d started sticking closer to the office, took Lulu with me everywhere, and made sure my doors were locked before I started my car. When a friend tapped on my car window while I was stopped for the red light, I jumped halfway out of my skin.

As far as I was concerned, one bright spot lit the dreariness, though. Hubert came out of the hospital Wednesday so embarrassed at what had happened that he decided to withdraw from the upcoming election.

He also put a big banner over his store:
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE
.
EVERYTHING MUST GO
.
CLOSING CHRISTMAS EVE
.

Lulu and I popped over Thursday morning to see what all he had to sell. “Appliances, shelves, light fixtures. You all in the market for a new refrigerator?”

“We got new appliances when we moved in, but we might be interested in a freezer. We left ours with Martha.” I moseyed over and checked out the one upright he had left. “What kind of price can you give me?”

“Half off.” He trotted over and started extolling the features of that particular model as if he had several for me to choose from. I stepped back slightly and noticed the price on the side. It was a hundred dollars higher than it had been the last time I’d checked it.

I wanted to grab him by the neck and throttle him, but restrained myself. “I’ll talk to Joe Riddley,” I said with admirable politeness.

“You might want to take some of those lights up there. They’re better than the ones you all have.”

“The ones we have are fine. What are you planning to do once you sell out?”

“I’ll find something. You don’t have to worry about that.”

That afternoon, Maynard dropped by my office, doing enough worrying for everybody. “If Daddy sits around, he’ll have another heart attack, but what else is there for him to do? I didn’t want him elected mayor, but at least he’d have had something to occupy his time and his mind.”

I turned my chair to face him more comfortably. “Didn’t I hear you’re remodeling the upstairs of Gusta’s house into an apartment? Could Hubert live there and help you out with the business? He could wait on customers while you are out scouting for merchandise.”

I thought that was brilliant. If I could only think of something to do with Gusta, Otis and Lottie’s problem would be solved.

Maynard shook his head. “You know as well as I do that Daddy and I get along better if we aren’t under each other’s feet. Besides, he likes where he is and I like the fact that somebody’s looking after him.”

Poor Otis and Lottie weren’t fine, stuck taking care of Hubert, but I couldn’t say that. In spite of what Joe Riddley might tell you, I do have a modicum of tact at times.

A second bright spot lit my horizon the second Monday in November. Joe Riddley had gone into Augusta for a meeting, and I was working at my desk when the sheriff called. “Hey, Judge, you busy?”

“Busy sitting here trying to think up some way to pay Joe Riddley back for that prank two months ago. I haven’t come up with the perfect revenge yet, but when I do, it is going to be terrible. You’re coming in for your share, too, don’t forget.”

“I’m shaking in my boots. Will it lessen my punishment if I tell you I have some progress to report on the Starr Knight case? We got back lab reports on the bat, and I’ve sent a deputy up your way with a warrant for arrest. The blood on the bat was definitely hers, and they found a match for the prints.”

“Was it the kid you’re already looking for?”

“No. They belong to Slick Redmond, who has been up twice for battery—a real nasty customer. He’s currently on probation down in Laurens County, so they had his present address. The sheriff down there is standing by to pick him up as soon as I get a warrant.”

“I have my pen in hand.”

Buster called again later. “Doubleheader, Judge! When the Laurens County sheriff went looking for Redmond, he found Howell, too—the other one we’ve been looking for. They’ve been living together. The sheriff pulled them both in, and my man is on his way to pick them up. Will you stand by to come down when they get here, to hold a bond hearing?”

“It will be my pleasure. I’m still trying to figure out, though, why Starr took Robin’s truck instead of Wylie’s for her trip. He says he offered to lend it to her, and Missy says Starr would never have taken a truck with an automatic transmission.”

“You know Joe Riddley wants you to stay out of this.”

“I am out of it. I’m just mulling it over. Haven’t even left my seat.”

“Don’t, until I call you.”

I didn’t need to leave my seat to find out how similar Robin’s truck had been to Wylie’s. A couple of well-placed phone calls elicited the information that Starr had moved out of her daddy’s house with a three-year-old Chevy truck, which she had sold for cash a few weeks later. That could have bought a lot of drugs. She’d gotten a decrepit Toyota pickup soon after she sold the Chevy, but after they found her body, the Toyota had been found in front of her apartment with two slashed tires. Apparently Robin’s truck and Wylie’s were the same make, model, and color, but Wylie’s was three years older, with a standard transmission. Starr would never have mistaken one for the other. Women around here know trucks like New York women know Prada. So had she deliberately taken Robin’s as one more dig at a woman she disliked? Or had the two guys that Missy’s Uncle Jacob saw over there that day taken the truck? And how had they or Starr gotten the keys? Had Robin left them in the truck?

I called her and asked.

“Yeah,” she said in a puzzled tone, obviously wondering why I was asking. Since I hadn’t come up with a good excuse, I hadn’t bothered to use one. Instead, I’d asked her straight out. “We all leave our keys under the seat when we’re working. It makes it easier to move vehicles if somebody needs to bring in a large animal. Whoever is at the best stopping place goes out and moves them all. We’ve never had any problems except that one time.”

I tried to put the rest of Starr’s afternoon in some kind of order, but couldn’t—not so it made sense. If she was going to Augusta, she didn’t need to head back to town or use the bypass. There was a shorter way to I-20 from Trevor’s house. So when and where did she meet up with the men who killed her? Was it the afternoon she took the truck? If not, why hadn’t she gone to her meeting? Where was she from Monday until she was killed? Had she been down in Dublin, where Redmond and Howell lived? Or were those guys dealing drugs somewhere in Hope County? Why did they dispose of her over the side of our bypass?

When I saw Joe Riddley’s shape looming outside our door, I quickly turned back to my computer screen. I wasn’t investigating, I reminded myself. I was simply mulling things over.

Buster called around eight, and I went to the detention center to confront two of the sorriest specimens of humanity it has ever been my misfortune to meet. To look at them, you’d have thought Georgia’s water shortage was desperate. Their nails were rimmed in black. Their hands were grimy. The parts of their faces not covered in pimples were dingy with a greasy sheen. The odor rising from their clothes was so pungent I almost suggested we move the hearing outdoors. Slick was twenty and Roddy nineteen. I grieved to think how few years it had been since each had left the hospital as a clean pink baby.

Detention center hearings were held behind a U-shaped counter in the foyer of the building. After I was appointed magistrate, the county had ordered a box for me to stand on when I had a hearing down at the detention center because that counter had been built to accommodate Joe Riddley, who was over six feet, and our chief magistrate, who was six-three. Often, though, I dispensed with the box and came out from behind the bench. Most times I didn’t even bother to put on my robe. I am pretty informal as judges go.

That evening I put on my robes, climbed up on my box, and peered down at the defendants. “Stand and state your full names for the record, please.”

They slouched to their feet, the crotches of their jeans hanging to their knees. “Pull up your pants,” I snapped, “and stand erect in this courtroom.” I didn’t feel the least bit lenient. I kept seeing those two swinging a baseball bat hard enough to break a young woman’s bones and kill her.

Slick sniggered, probably having only one context for the term
erect.

Roddy looked around, puzzled. With the bench in the middle of the front hall, he apparently hadn’t realized he was in court, or that court, like church, is not so much a matter of place as a state of mind and the right personnel.

I glared down at Slick. “If you laugh again, you will be in contempt of court. Do you understand me?”

He sobered up enough to give me a sullen nod. The deputy blinked. The sheriff coughed to cover his smile at how tough the magistrate had gotten all of a sudden.

Roddy looked at the floor while Sheriff Gibbons advised them of their rights and read the charges against them. Slick looked straight ahead without a flicker of emotion on his face. I thought that odd, since the evidence was stronger against him. Roddy had left his prints on Starr’s body and shoes, but Slick had left the prints on the bat.

Because this was a murder charge, I couldn’t have set bond if I had wanted to. I advised them that a letter would be sent to the superior court and a judge would come down to hold a bond hearing at a later date. Everybody in that courtroom knew the superior court would deny it. There was no way a judge was going to let those two loose on the world. Even if they didn’t manage to beat up somebody else before they came to trial, they might meet up with Wylie or Trevor and get themselves killed.

Slick gave me a contemptuous look as I sent them back to the cells, but Roddy looked at the ground as he shuffled after the deputy. “Be sure they bathe before bed,” I called after them. Roddy’s head jerked around. Slick gave no sign he heard.

After I took off my robe, I borrowed the sheriff’s private restroom to wash my hands. “I feel like we ought to disinfect the whole place,” I said with a shudder when I returned to his office.

“Scum,” he replied. “Absolute scum.”

“Have they given any reason for what they are alleged to have done?”

“Slick denies it completely. Roddy won’t say a word, not even to his lawyer.”

“Slick seemed amazingly cool. Did you tell them what evidence you have against them?”

“Not yet. They got here right before you did, and I decided to leave that up to their attorneys. I frankly don’t want to have more to do with either one of them than I have to.”

I sighed. “I hope Trevor doesn’t attend the trial. The sight of those two could break his heart again.”

I wish I could report that Nancy Jensen got elected mayor the following day. Instead, a man who had declared at the last minute, the manager of a video store down near the Bi-Lo, beat her by a narrow margin—primarily because he was a man.

Without the election to talk about, Hubert stopped coming over. For two weeks, Evelyn drooped around the store like wash that’s been left in the rain. She didn’t even color her hair. Gradually it began to turn the color of a rusted tin roof—gray with streaks of muddy brown.

“You’re gonna scare off what few customers we have if you don’t perk up a bit,” I told her the Monday before Thanksgiving. “Call Phyllis and see if she can take you this afternoon. Tell her I said to make you beautiful. Get your nails done while you’re at it, then call Hubert and invite him to dinner tonight. He loves home-cooked meals.”

She cut her eyes my way and turned bright pink. “I couldn’t! What if he wouldn’t come? I’d feel like a fool.”

“Make beef stew and I promise you he’ll come. Now go call Phyllis, and if she has an opening, take the rest of the afternoon off. If we get a sudden throng, I’ll draft Joe Riddley to work the register.”

The next day Evelyn came in with a really nice haircut, her hair the color of autumn leaves, perky polish on her nails, and a glow on her face.

“I take it Hubert came to dinner.” I was dying for details, but determined not to beg. “How did it go?”

She gave a shrug and turned away. “Okay.”

“I see that blush. Did he invite you to eat Thanksgiving dinner with him and Gusta?”

“No.” She let my heart go down a few notches before she added, “I’m going to eat with some folks from my church, Hubert is eating with Selena and Maynard, and Miss Gusta is going over to Meriwether and Jed’s. Friday evening, though, he’s bringing barbecue over and we’re gonna watch the game.”