Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (4 page)

Unfortunately, Evelyn was made of sterner stuff than I needed at the moment.

“I told you—I promised.” She pulled her feet up under her and sat on them. I gave her a stony look for a very long moment.

Eventually I decided we might as well talk. “Did you hear the rest, about the truck Starr was driving?”

“I heard it was Robin Parker’s.” From the way Evelyn said the woman’s name, I could tell she wasn’t buying stock in Robin anytime soon.

“You’re not a member of the Robin Parker Fan Club?” I took a swig of my Coke, which was getting warm and losing its zing.

Evelyn reversed her legs and wiggled to get more comfortable. “I hardly know her, but she’s too goody-goody for me. She never smiles, and she watches over those two girls like we had predators behind every bush. She hardly lets anybody talk to them.”

“You can’t fault a single mother because she’s careful with her daughters. I wish Starr had been more careful with her son. But I wonder why she took Robin’s truck.”

“Maybe she was jealous of the way Trevor keeps bragging on Robin. Wylie Quarles has worked for Trevor a lot longer, but Trevor never says much about his work.”

“Maybe that’s because Robin is a better taxidermist. Some women can’t help being great.”

Evelyn snorted. “Like the person cuffed to her desk at the moment?”

“Don’t get personal.” I finished the Coke and tossed the bottle toward a recycling bin I kept by my desk. Consistent with the rest of my day, it clattered to the floor and rolled out of reach.

Evelyn sighed as she retrieved it. “Starr had such a tough life.”

I’ve never been one to color a person with sentimentality just because she died, and I was not feeling charitable at the moment. “Starr made a lot of bad choices in her life, and her daddy spoiled her rotten. She might not have turned out the way she did if her parents had reined her in a little.”

Evelyn’s eyes flashed with indignation. “Her mother reined her in fine, until she got so sick. It was Trevor who spoiled her, and he couldn’t help it. Starr wrapped him around her finger the minute she was born.”

That’s when I remembered that not only did Evelyn and Trevor go to the same church, but they had been dating earlier that summer. For all I knew, they might have started discussing marriage in the near future. Evelyn and I didn’t often sit down and discuss our personal lives.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know them well enough to make judgments. Did I hear you are dating him?”

“Not anymore. That didn’t work out.”

In spite of what Joe Riddley might tell you, I have enough tact to curb my curiosity at times. I was doing a pretty good job of it, considering that a widowed man who owned a business ought to look pretty good to Evelyn. Single men in her age bracket were a rarity in Hopemore. Still, I didn’t say a word—just sat there trying to get as comfortable as I could with one leg cramping up.

To my relief, she told me before I broke down and asked.

“The main thing Trevor and I had in common was that we’d each lost a spouse and had a big hole in our lives. We knew how that felt. He had known Jack a little, too, and I knew Cathy real well, so we could talk about them without it being awkward. I figured, though, that after a while we’d build something of our own over the holes. Sort of a floor over a basement, you know?”

“Bless your heart, you’re a poet. I never knew that.”

She gave me a rueful grin. “Trevor and I never made any poetry together. He hasn’t gotten over Cathy, and I don’t think he ever will. Our relationship—or what I thought could be our relationship—never went beyond talking about Cathy and Jack. There was one more thing, too. You know my dogs?”

“Of course.” Two of the ugliest mutts I’d ever seen. They were so ugly they were downright cute, and Evelyn adored them.

“I started noticing how Trevor acted around them. He never played with them, but he’d sit on the couch and stare at them. I got it in my head that he was trying to figure out what pose they would look most natural in if they were stuffed. I might have been wrong, but it still gave me the willies.”

I shuddered and glanced over at Lulu. As if sensing my attention, she opened one eye and wagged her tail. I reached in my bottom drawer and tossed her a treat. Joe Riddley claims I love that dog more than I love him. On that particular day, it was a close call. When she died, I wanted her decently buried. The idea of Trevor stuffing her in a “natural pose” didn’t bear thinking about.

Since Evelyn wasn’t engaged to Trevor, I didn’t have to give him a halo for good parenting, either. “I don’t know how he treats dogs, but he seems to have made a mess of Starr after her mother died. Just because he looks like a big soft teddy bear doesn’t mean he has to act like one. He was a first sergeant in Vietnam, for heaven’s sake, and commanded over a hundred men. Why couldn’t he rein in one young girl?”

Evelyn scratched her scalp, which cheap dye was drying out terribly. I kept suggesting she go see Phyllis, my hairdresser, and get a really good color job, but so far I hadn’t persuaded her. “I think it was because he and Cathy married late and he never got over being astonished that they could produce such a gorgeous child. Remember Starr as a little girl? Blond curls and big blue eyes, with the longest lashes you ever saw? She looked like a princess.”

Evelyn sounded so wistful that I wondered if that’s how she had wanted to look when she was a child. Maybe it was still how she wanted to look. Mama used to say, “You can be anybody you like, so long as you don’t look in the mirror.”

I returned to the subject at hand. “You reckon that’s why they saddled her with the name Starr?”

“It was worse than that. Her legal name was Starry Knight. The night she was born, Trevor stepped outside and looked up at the heavens to thank God for his miracle. The sky looked so pretty, he got inspired to name the baby after it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope. That’s a quote. Starr shortened her name in elementary school, because the other kids started taunting her with ‘Sorry, Starry.’ She told them they’d be the ones to be sorry, because she was going to be rich and famous someday.”

Poor Starr was never going to be anything. That silenced us for a minute.

“But she didn’t get wild until after her mother died?” I needed to keep talking to take my mind off my left leg. In spite of the lotion and the stool, it was getting raw.

“Oh, she was always high-spirited, but Cathy kept Starr on a tight leash until she got so sick. Both parents let Cathy be the disciplinarian and Trevor be the sugar daddy. That backfired after Cathy died.”

“But Starr seemed to be doing real good for a while there.”

“Yeah. When she got pregnant, Trevor sat her down and told her that if she drank while she was pregnant, she would do damage to her baby that nobody could ever fix. He gave her articles on fetal alcohol syndrome and crack babies, and begged her to give up drinking and drugs until the baby was born. And he promised to take care of them both as long as she needed him to. That seemed to work. She finished high school and got a job down at the Bi-Lo, and she and Bradley lived with Trevor. She took good care of her baby, too. At church, we figured that she was like her daddy—had simply needed to sow a few wild oats.”

Evelyn stopped and heaved a sigh that seemed bigger than she was. “We were all thrilled when she started showing some interest in Wylie Quarles. He has a good job, sings in our choir, and is a fine young man. They could have made a decent couple.” She was silent a moment, regretting what would never be.

“So what happened?” I prodded.

“I don’t know. Back last spring, Starr and Trevor had a big blowup and she moved out. Took Bradley with her, and as far as I know, she hadn’t been back since.”

“She’d started using something again, too.”

Evelyn echoed my own fears. “I wondered if she was taking that methylethelene or whatever it’s called. She was looking terrible lately. And you know how she’d been neglecting Bradley.”

Before we could say anything else, the door was flung open. The office seemed filled with electricity, and I got a whiff of the pungent odor of nervous sweat. Lulu leaped to her feet, barking as only a beagle can.

Trevor stood in the door, his brown fluffy hair standing out in all directions. His stomach strained his red T-shirt and bulged over the waistband of his jeans, racing his beard to see which would be first to get inside the office. Sweat stood in beads on his forehead and had made circles under his arms. I’m not one to see auras around people, but if I could, I’m sure the air around his head would have crackled.

I shushed Lulu sharply, although I don’t think Trevor noticed her. “I need you, Judge.” His cheeks were wet with tears.

“Oh, Trevor, I am so sorry.” I wished language were more adequate. He looked to me like a man holding on to sanity by one skinny thread. “How can I help you?”

“I want my grandson! What’s happened to the boy?”

I chewed my lower lip and considered how to reply. In the normal way of things I wouldn’t have any idea where the child was. I am a magistrate. It’s juvenile judges who handle foster placements, and they generally keep them private, to prevent parents from snatching a child and disappearing. The only reason I knew where to find Bradley was because he was down at Ridd and Martha’s.

I decided to answer with the truth, but not the whole truth. “Magistrates don’t have anything to do with juvenile court.”

“The police chief said you ought to know where the boy is. Do you?”

Faced with a direct question, I wouldn’t lie. “Yes, but I can’t tell you without permission of the juvenile court.”

“Then get them on the phone, dagnabit! I want that boy! It’s bad enough I lost my daughter!” He slammed one fist against the doorjamb. The entire office shook. Lulu growled.

“Trevor—,” Evelyn started.

“Don’t ‘Trevor’ me, woman. I want my grandson. He’s all I got left now. My little girl, my Starr…” Tears gushed from his eyes and down onto his beard. He leaned his head against my wall and wept with gusty sobs. “I gotta have my grandbaby, you understand? I gotta have him!”

I reached for the telephone. “Let me call the juvenile judge.”

In a city, Trevor might have had to wait several days for a court hearing. In Hope County, the juvenile judge and I had a quick conversation and I was able to tell him, “You go down to my son Ridd’s place—the big blue house we used to live in, half a mile down Yarbrough Road. You know where that is?”

He fought for self-control. “Past the Bi-Lo?”

“That’s right. It’s the last house on the road. Ridd and Martha have been keeping Bradley. The juvenile judge will meet you with papers to sign, and then you can take him home.”

“Thank you.” He wiped one damp hand on the seat of his pants and held it out to me. “I didn’t mean to talk rough, but I got the news about Starr not half an hour ago”—he took a ragged breath—“and I’m pretty shook up.” He sniffed back tears.

I handed him a tissue. His courtesy was touching under the circumstances. “I understand, but pull yourself together before you get down there. That child is going to be confused enough without you scaring him half to death.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.” He wiped his nose and eyes and took a tremendous breath, pulling calm from somewhere deep inside him. “He’s very precious to me. I don’t know if you can understand—”

“I’ve got four grandchildren. I understand. Is there anything you need back at your house—meals or anything?”

“Our church will take food over,” Evelyn assured me.

He gave me a considering, bashful look. “You wouldn’t like to come down with me, would you? I don’t know how I’m gonna tell Bradley about this.”

I opened my mouth to say, “Why, sure,” but realized I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got something keeping me in the office this afternoon. Ridd and Martha are both there, though. They’ll be with you while you tell him. I’ll call and tell them to expect you.”

When he left, Evelyn and I sat utterly drained. When I summoned the strength, I reached for the phone to call Ridd. “You wouldn’t have wanted to live with that man,” I told her as I punched in the numbers. “He’d have worn you out in a week.”

She was so pale her freckles stood out. “I’ve never seen him like that. You don’t think he’d been drinking, do you?”

“No. He’s just learned his child has been killed. That can make anybody crazy.”

Forty minutes later, Bo greeted me from Joe Riddley’s shoulder. “Hello! Hello!”

“Ready to go home, Little Bit?” My jailer fished in his top pocket for the key and knelt to unlock the cuffs.

I was tempted to kick him good, but there are limits to what you do when you plan to stay married another forty years. Still, I warned as I reached for my pocketbook, “You had better return those cuffs pronto, or you may wake up to find yourself attached to the bed in the morning.”

He opened his desk drawer and tossed the cuffs in. “I’ll take them over tomorrow.”

I hobbled toward the car behind him. “I will get revenge, you know, as soon as I figure out how.”

He laughed.

As we drove home, I pointed out, “You realize you wasted this grand gesture, don’t you? Starr Knight was in the truck, but she wasn’t murdered. She was most likely driving under the influence and didn’t make the curve. I have no reason nor inclination to get involved.”

Which just goes to show: A judge should never pronounce the verdict until all the evidence is in.

Friday I holed up in my office and compensated for Thursday’s leisure. Since Joe Riddley had a midday meeting, I went home to eat alone. Clarinda, our cook, was at a meeting of her sorority and had left food on the stove. I didn’t see a single soul except Gladys until midafternoon, and she was a morose woman, not inclined to chitchat with customers or with me. That’s why it was only when a sheriff’s deputy came in around two thirty with a warrant she wanted me to sign that I heard the latest dreadful news.

As I handed her warrant back, I noted, “You seem a tad distraught today—or is it distrait? I never can remember the difference.”

She rubbed one hand back and forth across her mouth like she was trying to get rid of a bitter taste. “I went to school with Starr, so this has shaken me some.”

“It is very sad,” I agreed.

“Sad? It’s depraved. I mean, who would beat somebody to death like that?”

My jaw dropped.

She took a step back. “You mean you didn’t know?”

My stomach felt like somebody had kicked me. “I heard it was an accident.”

“It was no accident. It was dark before we got her out of that truck, but we found that somebody broke her legs, arms, back, and neck. It must have been a madman.”

“And he’s still walking around out there somewhere?” Walker’s two kids were at the age where they liked to roam the town with their friends. How safe were they? How safe were any of us?

“We’ll get him. The sheriff is pulling out all the stops. Right now they’re going over the truck for evidence and trying to find people who saw her after Monday afternoon, when it was stolen. But you know something odd?”

“What’s that?”

“You knew Starr, right? Not what you’d call sedate.”

“No, I’d never have called her sedate.”

“You know what she was wearing when she died?”

“A white shirt or something?”

“A white button-down oxford-cloth shirt, black polyester slacks—baggy ones, at that—and black low-heeled shoes. I saw her right after they took her out of the truck, and she could have been a nun.”

I considered the unlikely outfit. “Could Trevor explain it?”

“Nope. He said he wouldn’t have thought Starr would be caught dead looking so respectable. Then he remembered she had.”

That curdled my gizzard. “I’ll be praying that you find him,” I promised.

As she started to leave, I said, “Wait.” I opened Joe Riddley’s drawer and handed her Buster’s cuffs. “Take these back to Sheriff Gibbons. He may need them. And if I see even a shadow of a smile on your face, you are going to be in big trouble.”

“No, ma’am. I’m not smiling. I’ll deliver them.”

She held her snicker until she was out the door.

I couldn’t sit there and dwell on routine work. I kept thinking about what Starr must have suffered. “What we need is a walk,” I told Lulu. “Want to go to the bank?”

I put her on the leash, stopped by the register to pick up the pitiful receipts for the day, and turned toward the corner with the light. I had to tug on Lulu’s leash to make her follow. The bank is directly across from our store, next to Spence’s Appliances, and she preferred to jaywalk.

“As a judge, I need to set a good example,” I reminded her. “It’s only half a block more each way.”

As we waited for the light to change, I glanced over across the street and smiled in anticipation. An ancient navy Cadillac sat in the handicapped space in front of the bank, a Cadillac that used to belong to Pooh DuBose, widow of Lafayette DuBose, before her death. Now Augusta Wainwright, Pooh’s oldest friend and our town’s leading aristocrat, relied on it and its driver, Otis Raeburn, for her transportation. Gusta might be old, but she was still hardy, and she and the bank security guard had a running feud about her right to park in the bank’s handicapped spot without a handicapped tag.

“Good,” I told Lulu. “We’ll be in time for the matinee.”

“Ma’am?” A young man I had never seen before thrust a well-worn wallet-sized photograph under my nose. “I’m sorry to bother you, but have you ever seen this woman? I’m trying to find my wife.” His brown eyes were anxious.

Lulu sniffed his cuffs while I took the photograph and studied it. The woman had wide blue eyes, enhanced lashes, enhanced lips, and probably an enhanced bosom. Her bottle-blond hair was arranged in one of those wild, curly styles that always make me think the woman either just got out of bed or ought to belong to a prehistoric cave community. You couldn’t have proved by that picture that she had a stitch on.

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Are you sure?”

He’d have to be crazy to expect somebody like that to blend into Hopemore, but he didn’t look crazy, just very ordinary. He was tall and slender, with coppery hair cut close to his head and the erect carriage I associate with military men.

“Somebody that glamorous would stand out a mile around here. I haven’t seen anybody who looks like she ought to be in movies.”

“She
is
beautiful.” His hand trembled as he stroked the picture. It looked like a familiar gesture. “She went missing a year ago, while I was in Afghanistan. I was with the Tenth Mountain Division, stationed at Fort Drum in upstate New York?”

He made it a question, and waited for me to show some recognition of the base or the division. I hadn’t heard of either one, but I nodded, to encourage him. He seemed to need to talk.

“I was short when I went over—due to get out a few months after I got back—but Bertie was real homesick. I guess she couldn’t wait. She gave up our apartment and disappeared. I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

“Georgia’s a long way from upstate New York.”

“I know, but she was from the South. I met her when I was in basic training at Fort Gordon, and one of my buddies thought he saw her in Augusta a month or so ago. I’ve been looking around there and in all the nearby towns. I’m afraid she might have lost her memory or something.”

My guess was that she had decided an ordinary young man wasn’t what she wanted, but she wasn’t likely to find much excitement in Hopemore. I felt so sorry for him that I offered, “Leave your name and contact information at the feed-and-seed store over there, and if we see her, we’ll let you know.”

“Here’s my card.” It had been printed on a computer. His name was Grady Handley, and the area code was the same as ours.

“You’re not still stationed in New York?”

“No, ma’am. I got out in June, and I’ve been looking for Bertie ever since. When I heard she might be down here, I got a temporary place to stay while I look around.”

The light changed. He wandered down the sidewalk in search of other highly unlikely leads, and I hurried toward the bank.

Before I went in, I peeped in the open window of Gusta’s car. As I had expected, Otis sat behind the wheel, cap pulled down over his eyes so he didn’t have to meet the glare of Vern, the bank’s security guard, through the double glass doors.

“What you know, Otis?” I greeted him.

He took off his cap and inclined his head, his face creased in a smile. “Hey, Judge, I saw you crossing the street and was hoping you’d stop. Do you have a minute? I got a problem I need to discuss with somebody, and you’re the very one I’d choose.”

Lots of people confuse magistrates with lawyers or think they can get advice free from a judge when they’d have to pay a lawyer. Otis was no freeloader, though, and I couldn’t imagine him breaking the law. We don’t tend to arrest people in Hopemore for driving ten miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile zone. “I’ve got a few minutes. Shall I get in and sit down?”

“Why, sure.” He gestured with a hand the same soft dusty brown as pecan shells. “Make yourself to home.”

I tied Lulu to the pole of the handicapped parking sign and slid into the passenger seat, the least-used seat in the vehicle since Pooh died. Gusta sat in back, as was fitting for a reigning monarch. “What’s on your mind?”

Otis was past eighty, still preached each Sunday in one of the small black churches in town, and was one of the most courtly men I had ever known. Before he got down to his problem, he insisted on observing the formalities. “How you doing, Judge?”

I opined I was doing fine and asked after his wife, Lottie. He opined she was fine, too. “So what’s bothering you today?” I asked.

“Two things, actually. I can’t seem to get my mind around what’s happened to Starr.”

I was surprised at his familiar use of her name. “You knew her?” Since Starr and her family lived outside of town, I couldn’t imagine how Otis had gotten acquainted with them.

“Oh, yes, from before the time Starr was born. I used to drive Miss Winifred and Mister Fayette’s animals over for Mister Trevor to mount the heads.” Otis and Lottie were the only two people in town who ever called Pooh by her given name.

“I knew Pooh and Lafayette were avid hunters, but I hadn’t realized they’d mounted the heads of animals they’d shot.”

“My, yes. They had a regular competition going to see who could bag the best-looking one. When I took the animals over, Starr would come running. She loved knock-knock jokes.”

“What did you do with the heads afterwards?” I’d been in Pooh’s house thousands of time, and I never saw a mounted head.

“I’d take them up to the lake house Mister Fayette built for himself and his buddies, and hang them on the wall. I reckon they got twenty buck heads up there by now, plus a couple of boars, and one antelope Miss Winifred bagged out west.” He chuckled. “Mister Fayette was some put out that she got an antelope and he didn’t. I don’t know what Jed will do with the place now. He’s not much into hunting or fishing.” Jed DuBose, an attorney in town, was Pooh’s grandson and heir. “Still, Mister Trevor is an artist at what he does. It would be a shame to throw them away.”

That seemed like a good segue back to our original subject. “So you knew Starr pretty well.”

“You could say that. We laughed and carried on a lot. I had to rescue her from a tree one afternoon when she climbed higher than she could get down from and didn’t like to call her mama. Her mama was right strict on her.” He hesitated. “Starr got a little wild after her mama died, but I always figured she’d grow out of that. She was such a sweet-natured child. Children tend to revert to their natures when they grow up. She just didn’t get a chance to grow up.”

That gave us cause for a minute of silence, but Otis wasn’t finished dredging up memories yet. “When Starr was real little, mind how she used to ride with her daddy in his green pickup down Oglethorpe Street? She was like a princess, waving to everybody on both sides.” He lifted one hand and gave a regal wave. “Her curls used to shine like sunshine. ’Course, he spoiled her, buying her everything under the sun, but he never let her be rude to another person. One day in the grocery store there was only one Snickers bar left in the box. I was reaching for it when Starr said, ‘Daddy, I want that candy bar.’ I drew back, like, to let her have it, but Mister Trevor said, ‘No, honey. Mister Otis already claimed it. You pick another kind.’ And she picked up that candy bar and handed it to me with the prettiest smile, and she said, ‘Here, Mister Otis. I like peanut butter cups, too.’ Such a sweet child.” He closed his eyes, and a tear escaped and rolled to his jaw. “Nobody had cause to be so vicious to that sweet child.”

I heartily agreed with him. “You’re a preacher. What do you think goes so terribly wrong in a person that he can do cruel things to somebody else? Is that part of some people’s makeup from the second they are born? Or do they learn it from cruelty others have shown them?”

“I don’t rightly know, Judge, but I do know this. Anybody who doesn’t believe in evil hasn’t looked around very far. They’s something in the universe that feeds on violence, and it’s more than human. And it will latch on to and take over any human willing to let it.”

“Somebody sure let it take them over this week.”

“You got that right. It distresses me mightily to think of Starr dying that way. I will never forget her waving to strangers on the sidewalk and giving up her candy bar so I could have it.” He wiped one hand across his face, and his finger glistened with tears.

I felt a lump in my throat. Seemed to me Starr had just had the most heartfelt eulogy she was likely to get.

We sat in silence while a fly buzzed in through my window and out through his.

“You mentioned you had two things bothering you?”

He approached the matter crabwise, from the side. “Well, it’s like this. I talked to Jed earlier this
after
noon.” He came to a dead stop, as if unsure how to go on.

“What’s Jed done now?”

Pooh’s grandson might now be one of the best lawyers in Hopemore, but he had been a mischievous boy and was a mischievous man. Otis had been getting him out of scrapes since he could walk. I figured he had gotten himself into another scrape and sent Otis to make things right. I figured wrong.

“He’s not done anything. It was Miss Winifried. Seems like when she died”—Otis stopped and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny throat—“she left Lottie and me what you might call a little windfall. A big windfall, actually.” He lowered his head and stared at his clasped hands, which were shaking. “I never expected it from her, but she’s left us enough to buy us a house, see some of the world, and keep Lottie comfortable after I’m gone. I can’t get over it. I surely can’t.”

Lottie was nearly twenty years younger than he, so that must be some windfall.

“You took care of Pooh all her married life, and look at all you and Lottie did for her after she got so sick and forgetful. I think that was utterly fair.”

Otis spoke what we both knew. “Fair don’t generally come into it where money’s concerned. You might think Jed would be upset at our getting so much, but he seems pleased as punch about it.”

Considering that Pooh had left Jed the controlling interest in the nationwide trucking company her husband had founded, he wasn’t going to miss any meals because of Otis’s inheritance. Besides, he was married to Augusta Wainwright’s only granddaughter. Between them, he and Meriwether could probably buy up several countries and still have pocket change. Otis, however, was as touched by Jed’s generosity as he had been by Pooh’s.