Thoroughly 10 - What Are You Wearing to Die? (5 page)

“He says we can stay right where we are if we want to, until they decide what to do with Miss Winifred’s house, but if we find a place we like, he’ll handle all the business side of buying it, for nothing. That is one fine family, Judge. One fine family. And Miss Winifred—” He choked and his lips worked. He pressed his knuckles to them and said in a voice clogged with tears, “Seems like I can’t get used to her being gone.”

My own eyes filled. “I can’t either. She was one of the sweetest people this town ever knew.”

“I keep seeing her all over the place. Handing out cookies to children from her porch after school, working in the yard in that big floppy hat and giving me what-for if I pruned the bushes too short, looking for her scruffy black pocketbook so she could go down to read to children in the hospital, playing with that big old dog she used to have…When she was alive, she stayed in one place. Now, seems like she’s all over the house at once. Lottie and I both feel it.” He covered his eyes and tears fell between his fingers. I handed him a tissue and pulled out one for myself.

For another couple of minutes we sat grieving together for a very special lady. Otis was a most comfortable person to grieve with.

“So what’s the problem?” I didn’t want us to be sitting there bawling when Gusta came out and the show began.

“It’s Miss Gusta and Mr. Hubert I’m concerned about. They’s nowhere for them to go.”

Two years before, when Meriwether had inherited a house from her daddy and moved out of her grandmother’s antebellum home, Gusta had moved in with Pooh, and they had turned the big yellow Victorian house into a private retirement home. Hubert Spence, who used to live down the road from us, had paid for an elevator to be installed and moved in with them. Hubert was a widower and a heart-attack survivor, so it was no longer wise for him to live alone. And though Pooh and Gusta had both been over eighty and Hubert was in his late sixties, they seemed to get along fine. Hubert boasted that he could walk to Spence’s Appliances, and he basked in the attentions of Otis, Lottie, and Gusta’s longtime housekeeper, Florine.

Pooh’s death in May had left a vacancy at their house as well as a big hole in my heart. I had been wondering what Hubert and Gusta would do. To my shame, it hadn’t occurred to me that Otis and Lottie might like to make some changes, too. Typically, Otis was worried about the others.

“You know Florine can’t manage that big house by herself, even if she was of a mind to, which she isn’t. She’s used to mostly doing for Miss Gusta. They’s no way she’s gonna take on all the cooking and cleaning plus laundry for Mr. Hubert. Lottie could keep working there, of course, even if we had our own place, but I’d kinda like to take her to see some of the world while I’m still able. I’d like to see some of those places Miss Winifred visited and talked about. I’d like to see Mali again, too.” His voice was wistful.

Pooh had not been your ordinary world traveler. Her trips generally took her to remote villages where her dollars were at work building schools, clinics, housing, or roads. Now that Otis mentioned it, I recalled that his congregation had held a musical event to help Pooh put a water system in a village in Mali. Afterwards, Pooh had surprised him and Lottie by taking them and two other couples from their congregation to see the finished product.

But Otis would be wise to travel soon if he planned to. His world-wandering days were limited. And while I appreciated his concern for Gusta and Hubert, I doubted that either of them would take Otis and Lottie into consideration when making plans for their own futures. Since I couldn’t say that out loud, I asked, “What does Lottie say?”

“I haven’t told her yet. She couldn’t go with me down to see Jed because she had promised Miss Gusta she’d bake one of her lemon pecan pound cakes for the Magnolia Women’s Club meeting this afternoon. When I got home, Miss Gusta wanted to come to the bank, and I decided I’d like some praying time before I talked to Lottie, anyway. While I was sitting here praying a few minutes ago, I saw you crossing the street, and it seemed like the Lord told me to talk to you before I brought it up with her.”

I was so astonished that my name would crop up as the answer to anybody’s prayers, I almost missed what he said next.

“I didn’t rightly like to discuss all this with Jed, considering that Miss Gusta is Jed’s family since he married Miss Meriwether. I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mention it to him.”

I noted that Meriwether had become “Miss Meriwether” since she grew up, but Jed would never be anything to Otis but “Jed.”

“I thought maybe you would have some notion what I ought to do,” Otis concluded in a tentative voice.

“I wish I had a quick answer for you, but I don’t. Jed, Meriwether, and little Zach could move in with Gusta and Hubert, but I’m not sure Hubert or Gusta would like living with a baby, and I can’t see Jed being happy with that arrangement.”

“Besides, Miss Meriwether loves that house her daddy left her, and Miss Gusta tends to like to have the say in her own place.”

Mama used to claim, “When two folks understand each other, there’s no need to mention aloud the nasty things you are both thinking.” Otis and I both knew that Gusta would like to have her say in the whole world if anybody would elect her Supreme Empress.

But I guess I’m as bad as Gusta, in my own way. I never can resist an invitation to give advice. “Give me a day or two. Can I talk it over with Joe Riddley?”

“That will be fine, but please don’t tell anybody else. I don’t want it to get all over town. If folks hear you’ve come into some money, seems like relatives you never knew you had come crawling out of the woodwork.”

“I won’t tell a soul but Joe Riddley. Oh, here comes Gusta now.”

“Let the show begin.” Otis put on his cap and opened his door.

Gusta stomped out of the bank, leaning heavily on her silver-headed cane. I climbed out of her front seat and said cheerfully, “Hey, Gusta.” I didn’t bother to open the back door for her to get in. I knew the drill.

She ignored me and, like an actress girding herself for a performance, waited silently on the sidewalk until Otis came around the car. It would never have occurred to her to open the door for herself.

Vern followed her out and started dancing around her on his game leg, looking like he had ants in his baggy gray uniform britches. The whole block could hear his tirade. Lulu, not to be outdone, contributed her share to the chorus.

“By rights, I oughta call the cops and get you arrested! You know you cain’t park there ’lessen you get yourself a permit. All you has to do is ask your doctor. He’ll give you one, you being so old ’n’ decrepit ’n’ all.”

Gusta drew herself up to her full and considerable height. “You odious little man, those permits are for those who have difficulty walking. I can walk. I simply do not choose to walk any distance to a bank my husband founded. I was parking in that space long before that blue sign went up—before you were born, in fact. I shall continue to do so as long as I live.”

“It ain’t right!” Vern’s voice went up and down the octave of frustration. “They’s laws! What if somebody came who needed that spot?”

Gusta lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. “They’d do exactly what they would do if I had a sticker and parked there. They’d find another space.”

She stomped past Vern, her cane ready to swat him if he got too near. She took a distant swipe toward Lulu for good measure, but we all knew she wouldn’t hit my dog. Not if she planned to live another day.

She seated herself in the backseat with the grace due her position as the granddaughter of a former governor and the sister of a former U.S. senator—even if both had been dishonest old lechers and, in the senator’s case, a drunk. By then a small crowd had gathered and folks were exchanging surreptitious smiles.

As Otis went toward his own door, Gusta deigned to lean out and speak to me. “Do something about that man, will you, MacLaren? Arrest him for obstruction of banking or some such thing. Otis, I am late for women’s club. Step on it, please.”

He pulled out and headed for the women’s club at a brisk twelve miles an hour.

The performance hadn’t tickled me like it usually did. I was perturbed by Otis’s situation and saddened by his memories of Starr. I hoped the sheriff would find her killer soon.

The only thing I had to offer that case was a casserole. I would take one to Trevor as soon as Joe Riddley and I finished work.

“I hope you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart,” Joe Riddley told me as we left town and headed west into a hot late-summer evening.

“Mostly because of Bradley. That’s why I made spaghetti.” That silenced him. Joe Riddley had grown as fond of the boy as I had in the short time the child had been part of our extended family. “I made enough for us, too,” I added, “since we’ll miss the buffet at the country club.”

Normally I would have been taking one of the frozen casseroles that Clarinda keeps in our freezer for times of bereavement. A frozen casserole is much easier to transport than a hot dish and can be saved in the freezer until all the fresh food is gone. However, Bradley and Cricket had eaten with us one night, and Bradley had liked my spaghetti so much, he ate three helpings. Only for a child would I endure a hot casserole on my lap for three miles on a sweltering evening. I could feel warmth seeping through the thick towel I’d placed under it to keep it from burning me or staining my khaki skirt.

That far out of town, beyond zoning restrictions, folks had enough land around their homes to indulge individuality in the matter of land use. Some had inserted businesses between residences. Some properties were better kept than others. One of our lawn-service customers lived just west of Trevor in a two-story brick McMansion that sat on an acre of landscaped lawn surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Beyond that was a camouflage clothing store housed in a Quonset hut.

Since we approached from the east, we passed Trevor’s neighbors on that side: a cluster of three mobile homes nestled like chicks around a baby blue double-wide anchored by a huge screened porch. The biggest thing on the property was a barn at the back. A sign out front read
SANDERS STABLES
.
HORSES BOARDED
.

I huffed at the sight of their yard, which was filled with a collection of elderly Volkswagen Beetles hunkered down in various stages of decay. “Looks like the county would make them do something about those cars.”

Joe Riddley was too busy slowing down and putting on his turn signal to reply.

A thin stand of pines separated the Sanders property from a white concrete-block building with a black-and-white sign at the road:
TREVOR KNIGHT
,
TAXIDERMIST
. Joe Riddley turned into a drive that was nothing more than ruts worn through the grass. A right fork in the drive led to the white building. It sat sideways to the highway, so that the front door and display windows faced a grassy parking area with spaces indicated by weathered railroad crossties. The left fork led to a frame ranch house stained dark brown.

Guests to the house parked wherever they liked. That evening, the yard was full of cars. Joe Riddley pulled in near the ditch by the road, which was as close as we could get. I climbed out, carefully holding the casserole away from my yellow top, Joe Riddley left his cap in the car, and we trudged up the drive. We exchanged greetings with a knot of men smoking under a sycamore and dodged children playing tag. An earlier breeze had disappeared, leaving the air hot and thick. Distant thunder rumbled. Gnats lit on any piece of skin they could find. Hopemore is below the Georgia gnat line, and if you think that’s a mythological geographical designation, come on down some hot afternoon.

I blew puffs of air to keep the pesky critters at bay while we headed toward a short concrete walk lined with unkempt borders of liriope that had begun to straggle into the weed-ridden grass. “We could send a crew out here to improve that grass and dig out the liriope.”

“We aren’t here to drum up business.” Joe Riddley steered me by one elbow up the walk. “We are here to take in spaghetti, express our regrets to Trevor, and go home. There’s a special about Iwo Jima on television that I want to see.”

“For what, the fifteenth time? Or is it the twentieth?”

“A woman who reads the same mysteries over and over can’t complain about my movie-watching habits. Come on, Little Bit. Say your piece, hand over the food, and let’s leave. The man deserves some privacy in which to grieve.”

Joe Riddley wasn’t the only grumpy person in Hopemore that evening. The senseless brutality of Starr’s death was affecting everybody. In a small town you feel the death of people, even if you don’t know them well. When a young person dies, she takes a piece of the whole town’s future. And when somebody dies savagely, as Starr had, you take it personally that such a thing has happened where you live.

Robin Parker stood on the stoop outside the front door. Given that she worked with Trevor, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her minding his door, but I was. After all, she’d only been in town since spring. Doorkeepers after a death are usually close friends or family. Were she and Trevor moving toward making her a part of his family? Men have been known to marry women only a few years older than their daughters.

If Trevor married Robin, though, he would certainly be lowering his standards. His first wife had been a pretty woman who fixed herself up and dressed as well as she could afford. Every time I saw Robin, I wondered why she didn’t do more with herself.

She wasn’t ugly, just plain. Tall and skinny as a rake handle, she could have benefited from mascara and eye shadow to bring out her eyes behind their gold-rimmed granny glasses. A rosy lipstick and a little rouge could have brightened her pale complexion, and if my face had been that thin, I’d have fluffed out my hair and maybe gotten a curly perm or highlights to brighten it. Robin pulled her brown hair back in the crooked-part ponytail favored by so many mothers of small children. I didn’t know her well enough to know if she looked the way she did out of religious conviction, because she was a militant feminist who scorned makeup, or because she didn’t know what to do with what she had, but that evening at Trevor’s, she wasn’t even wearing the light pink lipstick she typically favored.

I did notice that in honor of the occasion, she had doffed her usual jeans and oversized shirt and had put on a denim skirt with a light blue T-shirt and a big navy shirt. I wished she had chosen a brighter shade of navy, though. That color made her more drab and shapeless than usual. I was tempted to send her an anonymous subscription to a fashion magazine.

Her smile was wan as she held the door. “Come on in. I’m sorry you had to come under these circumstances, but I know Trevor will be glad to see you. He’s in the den.”

I couldn’t place Robin’s accent, but it wasn’t Georgian. Some people think all Southern accents are the same, but in fact no two states talk alike. Accents even vary within states. Vowels tend to broaden out and melt, the closer you get to the coast. Hers were crisp.

Beside her stood a man wearing a rumpled camouflage suit in the jungle colors I associate with the Vietnam War and my own children’s growing-up years. In fifth grade, Ridd didn’t want to wear anything except camouflage pants and T-shirts. This man was too young to be one of Trevor’s old army buddies—not more than thirty, I figured—but maybe he was the son of an army buddy.

He had thin yellow hair falling to his shoulders, an equally yellow mustache, and blue eyes set aslant in his face, and while I couldn’t recall ever seeing him before, he looked familiar. I realized why when Robin’s older child came running up the steps yelling “Mama! Mama!” as she pushed her way past Joe Riddley and me to clutch Robin’s skirt. The child had the same wispy yellow hair and slanted blue eyes. She looked like a wraith, her skin like skim milk. Pale blue veins throbbed at her temples, the same shade as her eyes. As I looked from one to the other, Robin shushed her daughter long enough to say, “Joe Riddley and Judge Yarbrough, I want you to meet my brother, Billy Baxter.”

We barely had time to nod at each other, for the little girl was prancing up and down in obvious distress. “Mama! Mama!” She was about five or six, and so hyper that she reminded me of a toy I used to have: a wooden paddle with a rubber ball on an elastic band. The only way to keep it going was to jiggle your arm real fast. That kid jiggled so much she made me dizzy.

“Mind your manners,” Robin said, rebuking her. “Tell the Yarbroughs you’re sorry you shoved. And where’s your sister?”

She threw us a quick and unapologetic “I’m sorry,” then turned back to her mother. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Some big boys are going to throw rocks at cars on the road, and Anna Emily is tagging after them. I told her and told her not to, but she won’t mind.” She danced in impatience to see the reaction to her news.

Robin didn’t disappoint her. “Excuse me.” She hurried down the steps to the yard, accompanied by the wraithlike jumping bean. I wasn’t surprised when Joe Riddley went after them. If anybody could persuade boys to change their ways, he could.

Billy Baxter gave me a halfhearted salute and headed for a dirty green pickup. “See you later,” he called to Robin as he swung up into the cab.

I met a wall of noise and heat when I went through the door, for the air conditioner had given up trying to deal with the crowd. The air in the living room was fuggy with mixed perfumes, aftershaves, and warm bodies. I barely had time to see a sofa and a couple of chairs covered in faded sure-don’t-fit slipcovers before some woman I didn’t know took my arm and dragged me toward the kitchen at the back.

Sweat trickled down inside my shirt as I carried my dish through the crowd, speaking to acquaintances and looking for someplace to set it down. Flushed-faced women cleared a space on the beige Formica counter for me to deposit the spaghetti among a sea of ham, potato salad, sweet potato casseroles, cakes, pies, and vegetables and salads that had probably been growing in local gardens earlier that day.

“That’s real nice of you, Judge,” a stout woman said.

The way she was eyeing my offering, I could tell she had her suspicions that I’d started with a jar of store-bought sauce and simply added ground beef, garlic, and oregano—and she clearly thought spaghetti a pretty poor offering compared to those of women who had baked, peeled, picked, and prepared food for hours.

I reminded myself that she hadn’t sat in an office all day, but there is no way a working woman leaves a kitchen full of homemade food without a load of guilt.

I trotted my sorry self to the den to speak to Trevor.

Loud voices poured out the door before I got there. One—a high, anguished tenor—cried, “If I find him, I’ll kill him! So help me, I will.”

“Don’t talk about killing in here, Wylie,” a bass admonished him sharply as I stepped through the door.

I concluded that the intense young man pacing before the cold fireplace must be Wylie Quarles, for as soon as he caught my eye, he got real interested in a hangnail. I knew him slightly, although not by name. He came to the store each spring to buy seeds and starter vegetables for his mother’s garden. I remembered Evelyn raving that he sang in their choir, worked for Trevor, and used to date Starr. I wondered if Starr had minded that she was several inches taller than he.

If his threat was anything to go by, he certainly minded that she had been killed. Long dark hair hung in eyes that were pink and bloodshot with unshed tears. Beneath a skimpy black mustache, his mouth was set in an angry, determined line.

The rest of the room was full of men I didn’t know, but I’d seen a few in traffic court or before my bench for littering, building-code violations, or dumping furniture in bins designated for household garbage. I saw no indication they were nervous in my presence. Several lifted a hand and called, “Howdy, Judge. Howdy.”

Trevor sprawled in a brown recliner that had shaped itself to his bulk. He looked like a dead man breathing. His beard hung listless on his chest, his eyes were fixed on the middle of the tan Berber carpet, vacant and unseeing, and although his friends spoke around him, he gave no sign of hearing.

The most alive part of him was his left arm, which cradled Bradley. The fingers of that hand stroked the boy’s arm in a slow, somber rhythm. Bradley’s eyes were closed, but I didn’t know if he was asleep or trying to avoid looking at the pictures of his mama that sat on the television and hung between animal heads on the pine-paneled walls. Trevor had invested a considerable amount in studio portraits of his daughter over the years. Three of the wall portraits were larger than life: Starr as a lovely infant barely able to sit, as a beautiful ten-year-old with soft curls on her shoulders, and as a teenager in a halter top and too much makeup. She was probably fourteen in that picture, but looked twenty. It was the most recent one he displayed. My guess was that Starr had never again looked good enough for a studio portrait.

“Hey, Trevor, here’s Judge Yarbrough come to see you,” said a man named Farrell Stokes. Since he’d retired, Farrell did nothing except hunt and fish, so it made sense that he would know Trevor. I wondered if he bugged Trevor to get his animals finished the way he bugged our lawn service about his yard. He was a persnickety little man who could be a pest if things weren’t done exactly the way he wanted them.

Trevor lifted his head as if the weight of it was too much to bear, and stared at me without a word. The look in his eyes was one I’d seen in the eyes of a dog pleading with Joe Riddley to put it out of its misery.

“I wanted to say again how sorry I am.” I stepped forward and offered my hand.

He clutched it with his free one. “I appreciate it, Judge. I didn’t mean to get out of line in your office yesterday.”

“You were grieving.”

“Grieving a whole lot more today. Did you hear what somebody done to my baby?” His gaze strayed to her teenage picture and his lips trembled.

“I heard.”

“They had no cause to do that. And why’d they dress her up like that? Starr never wore that kind of stuff.”

“Starr never had cause to steal that truck, neither.” Wylie was indignant. “I told her she could use mine. Keys were in it. All she had to do was drive it off.”

“The sheriff will find whoever did it,” Farrell insisted. “Hang on to that.”

Trevor was silent, but Wylie wasn’t comforted. “Putting them away won’t bring Starr back, or keep her from going through what she did.” He made a fist and slammed it down on the mantelpiece. “A trial is too good for whoever did that to Starr.”