Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
A Personal Word
Praise for Patricia Sprinkle’s Mysteries
Who Left That Body in the Rain?
“Forming a triumvirate with Anne George and Margaret Maron, Sprinkle adds her powerful voice to the literature of mysteries featuring Southern women. . . . Highly recommended.” —Linda Hutton, Mystery Time
“Who Left That Body in the Rain? charms, mystifies, and delights. As Southern as Sunday fried chicken and sweet tea. Patricia Sprinkle’s Hopemore is as captivating—and as filled with big hearts and big heartaches—as Jan Karon’s Mitford. Come for one visit and you’ll always return.”
—Carolyn Hart
“An heirloom quilt. Each piece of patchwork is unique and with its own history, yet they are deftly stitched together with threads of family love and loyalty, simmering passion, deception and wickedness, but always with optimism imbued with down-home Southern traditions. A novel to be savored while sitting on a creaky swing on the front porch, a pitcher of lemonade nearby, a dog slumbering in the sunlight.” —Joan Hess
“Captures true Southern customs and personalities, small-town politics and mores perfectly.”—Romantic Times
“Authentic and convincing. This series is a winner.”
—Tamar Myers
Who Invited the Dead Man?
“A wonderfully portrayed Southern setting. . . . MacLaren seems right at home in her tiny town.”—Library Journal
“Touches of poignancy mixed with Southern charm and old secrets make Who Invited the Dead Man? a diverting read.”
—Romantic Times
And others . . .
“Light touches of humor and the charming interplay between MacLaren and her magistrate husband make this a fun read for mystery fans.”—Library Journal
“Sparkling . . . witty . . . a real treat and as refreshing as a mint julep, a true Southern pleasure.”—Romantic Times
“Sparkles with verve, charm, wit, and insight. I loved it.”
—Carolyn Hart
“Engaging . . . compelling . . . a delightful thriller.”
—Peachtree Magazine
“The sort of light entertainment we could use more of in the hot summer days to come.”—The Denver Post
“[Sprinkle] just keeps getting better.”
—The Charleston Post and Courier
Thoroughly Southern Mysteries
WHO INVITED THE DEAD MAN?
WHO LEFT THAT BODY IN THE RAIN?
WHO LET THAT KILLER IN THE HOUSE?
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, October
eISBN : 978-1-101-16149-4
Copyright © Patricia Sprinkle, 2003
All rights reserved
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Thanks to . . .
Judge Mildred Ann Palmer, magistrate from Burke County, Georgia, remains my inspiration for the character of MacLaren Yarbrough and continues to give technical help when I need it. I thank her and her delightful family—who know, I hope, that MacLaren’s family in no way resembles theirs.
Judge Curt St. Germaine, chief magistrate of Burke County, patiently answered questions about various aspects of the Georgia judicial system as it relates to the work of magistrates. Eddie Slay, coordinator of the Cobb County, GA, CASA program, explained procedures involving juvenile offenders.
Emöke Sprinkle provided information about hospital psychiatric wards and introduced me to Dr. Greg Brack, associate professor of counseling and psychological services at Georgia State University and a trauma specialist, and Dr. Michele Hill, a conflict resolution specialist. Drs. Brack and Hill helped me understand the psychological dynamics of various characters in this book. They also spoke of the characters as real people and discussed them as such—a rare and precious gift for any author. And they steered me to Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, which provided further insights into not only the trauma of several characters but also possible outcomes for their lives.
Since I knew nothing about girls’ fast-pitch softball when I began, I am very grateful to Jaime Caroti, who played the sport both locally and in national games, and to Leonard Hill, a fast-pitch softball coach, who helped me understand the game.
High-school chemistry teacher Dwight Jinright researched several methods of killing yourself in a high-school chemistry lab. Thanks, Dwight. I hope you forget all you learned.
I also thank my agent, Nancy Yost, for finding a home for the book, and I especially thank my editor, Ellen Edwards, for helping me shape it into what it was meant to be.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
MacLaren Yarbrough: amateur sleuth, Georgia magistrate, co-owner of Yarbrough’s Feed, Seed and Nursery
Joe Riddley Yarbrough: MacLaren’s husband, a former magistrate, co-owner of Yarbrough Seed and Nursery
Ridd: the Yarbroughs’ elder son, high-school math teacher and part-time farmer
Martha: Ridd’s wife, an emergency-room supervisor
Cricket (4) and Bethany (16): their children
Clarinda Williams: the Yarbroughs’ longtime cook
Ronnie Hayes Clarinda’s grandson, just graduated from the University of Georgia
DeWayne Evans: high-school science teacher, coach of the Honeybees fast-pitch softball team
Yasheika Evans: DeWayne’s younger sister, just graduated from Howard University
Sara Meg Stanton: widowed owner of Children’s World, a clothing/toy shop
Garnet (18) and Hollis (16): her children
Buddy Tanner: Sara Meg’s younger brother and a local CPA
Smitty Smith (17): young skinhead, leader of a gang of hoodlums
Tyrone (Terrible Ty) Noland (17): member of Smitty’s gang who likes Hollis
Willie (Wet Willie) Keller (16): another gang member
Art Franklin (18): poet, student at community college, waiter at Myrtle’s, likes Garnet
Charlie Muggins: police chief
Isaac James: assistant police chief
1
An empty locker room shouldn’t have anybody in it—not even a dead body.
My son Ridd pushed open the door and called, but he got no answer, of course.
To make sure, he pushed the door wider and put his head inside. “Anybody he—?”
He cut off midword, gave a lurch, and clutched the door for support. “Oh, God, no!” He clung to that doorframe and his knees buckled.
I will never know how I covered the distance between us in time, but I caught him before he slid to the floor. Holding him tight around the waist, I peered past him into the dimness.
That was the morning we found the body.
This story didn’t begin then, of course. I’m not sure that even the United Daughters of the Confederacy could trace its genealogy with reliable accuracy, but for me, it began the first Saturday in June, the day Hollis Stanton socked a softball the center fielder couldn’t catch. Nobody had an inkling that day that evil, like contained poison gas, was fixing to be released, that it would ooze across town in an invisible cloud that, by the end of the month, would leave one person dead and another clinging reluctantly to life.
We were all there. How did we miss what was going on? How did I?
When Hollis hit her ball, two hundred people in the high-school bleachers gasped in surprise. Hollis was a great little catcher, but she was a dreadful batter.
Brandi Wethers left second base and flew toward home. We leaped to our feet and cheered as she crossed the plate a gnat’s second before the ball reached the catcher. We kept cheering as Hollis rounded first base, and when she slid in safe at second, hair streaming behind her like a banner of pure copper, everybody was jumping up and down. Her uncle Buddy, four rows below us, waved his arms and screamed like a wild man.
Beside me, my cook, Clarinda, grunted in disgust. “Even that didn’t get Garnet’s nose out of her book.” Sure enough, Hollis’s older sister was a solitary island of calm, head bent over her book, thick auburn hair spread across her shoulders like a mantle. Anybody could tell that Garnet Stanton thought fast-pitch softball an enormous waste of time.
I didn’t have time to waste on Garnet. I was watching a family in front of us: two fat little boys, a pudgy father whose belly strained his yellow T-shirt, and a plump blond mother in black spandex pants and a tight pink top with two tiny straps and far more beneath it than it was designed to hold. The way they had screamed and carried on while Brandi was running, I figured they were her family. It wasn’t so easy to figure whether their combined bulk, jumping in unison, would get all our names in next week’s Hopemore Statesman under the headline “Bleachers Collapse, Killing Dozens.”
As they finally sat down, Clarinda leaned over and muttered, “I personally wouldn’t wear that pink top without a bra.” I elbowed her. Clarinda has a carrying voice. She also has far too much bosom to wear any top without a bra.
Clarinda had come with Joe Riddley and me to watch the Hopemore Honeybees, our recreation department’s summer season, senior girls’ fast-pitch softball team, play the county championship game. Our store—Yarbrough’s Feed, Seed and Nursery—was team sponsor and both our older son, Ridd, and Clarinda’s grandson, Ronnie, were assistant coaches. The real reason Clarinda and I were there, though, and why Joe Riddley had taken the unprecedented step of shutting down the store for this game, was because Ridd’s daughter, Bethany, was the team’s star pitcher. All three of us were a bit biased where Bethany was concerned.
It was a glorious day for a ball game. At the edge of the field, mimosas waved small pink pom-poms. Up near the school, a huge old magnolia spread blossoms as creamy and wide as dinner plates while fat blue hydrangeas nodded approval. The sky was deep blue, dotted with dollops of whipped-cream clouds, and new-mown hay and honeysuckle scented the breeze. It looked like half of Hopemore—county seat of Hope County, located in that wedge of Georgia between I-16 and I-20—had come out to watch the Honeybees play what we all expected to be their final game.
Summer sports in Hopemore had never produced a winning team. We’d been amazed that the Honeybees had gotten this far—largely due to the coaching of high-school chemistry teacher DeWayne Evans and his sister, Yasheika. Now, at the bottom of the last inning, the team was two runs behind, had two outs, and had reached the bottom of their batting lineup. Beside Joe Riddley on the bench, Bethany’s little brother, Cricket, squirmed. His mother, Martha, gave him an encouraging hug, but she looked anxious. I saw several Honeybees eyeing the other team’s coach. The winning coach would choose three or four players from each county team to play on an all-county team at district play-offs the last week in June. I’m sure every Honeybee wondered if she would get picked.
As the next batter sauntered toward the plate, adjusting her helmet over a long brown ponytail, I heard groans.
“Do it, baby!” Clarinda called.
“Send in a pinch hitter!” Brandi’s mother yelled. Her husband and sons took up the cry. Others followed, stamping their feet so the bleachers throbbed. “Pinch hitter! Pinch hitter!”
If I’d had a sword, that woman’s frizzy yellow head would have rolled, county magistrate though I am. That wasn’t just any old ballplayer she was razzing—it was my oldest grandchild. Sure, she might bat to fielders’ mitts like her balls contained a homing device, but she had a great windmill pitch. She didn’t deserve to be insulted by adults who ought to know better.
Bethany trudged toward the plate like somebody heading for the guillotine.
I saw her daddy give her an encouraging slap on the back and heard him say, “Come on, Yarbrough, hit a homer.” I wished he sounded a little more convinced that she could.
Bethany and Hollis had played ball together since they were little, but it was Yasheika’s after-practice work and DeWayne’s good coaching that had turned them into a catcher and pitcher the Statesman had started calling DeWayne’s Deadly Duo. Unfortunately, no amount of coaching had ever made them good hitters. That’s why they batted last.
“Come on, baby. You can do it!” Clarinda yelled again.
Martha, an emergency-room supervisor who daily faced gory scenes without flinching, covered her eyes. “I can’t watch. Tell me when it’s over.”
Joe Riddley cupped his mouth and begged at the top of his lungs, “Hit one for Pop!”
I was considering disowning the lot of them, when I realized I was clenching my fists and whispering, “Please, God, please, God, please, God,” as if the Almighty had nothing better to do that afternoon than make sure my granddaughter hit a ball.
Bethany flickered a quick, nervous smile in our direction, then gave Coach Evans a pleading look like she wanted to lay down her bat.
Cricket bounced on the front of his bleacher seat, ready to fly down and help his big sister. “Hit it, Beth’ny,” he roared into a sudden silence. “Hit it
, for a change!”
Bethany visibly cringed.
“Time out!” Coach Evans left his position behind third base and went to home plate. He was dark as semisweet chocolate, his face a shadow in the afternoon sun. I couldn’t see his expression as he spoke into Bethany’s ear, but she listened gravely, then nodded and lifted her chin. As he stepped away, Yasheika left her first-base coaching spot and trotted to the plate.
Yasheika was much closer to the ages of the players, a tall, slender young woman with coffee-and-milk skin. She’d graduated from Howard University in early May, then came to Hopemore to help her brother coach because, as Bethany and Hollis told us at least weekly, she used to pitch for a fast-pitch team that had won the national championship.
Whatever Yasheika said made Bethany laugh. As the coach trotted back to first, Bethany took a few practice swings with what looked like a whole lot more determination.
Poised on the balls of her feet, she waited for the pitch. She didn’t swing when the first ball crossed the plate, but the umpire called, “Strike one!”
I glared in his direction. “Anybody could see that ball was low.”
Joe Riddley reached across Clarinda and laid a big hand on my arm. “Take it easy, Little Bit. It’s not over yet.” His eyes didn’t leave the game.
Who Let That Killer in the House? Page 1
