Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “Come and get them anytime. But they are all you’re likely to get.”

  “You don’t mean that. You wouldn’t really do that. You’re just trying to upset me.”

  Edie whirled to face her, and although she kept her voice low, it had such force it easily reached me where I stood. “You’ve already upset me. And Valerie. And Henry. I guess it wasn’t enough to be rude. I presume you also listened in on my private call last night. Now get off the counter.”

  Genna slid to a standing position. Both hands were clenched at her side, and her voice was shaking. “Okay, I picked up the phone to call Adney, and you were talking. And yes, when I heard it was Shep, I did listen. It does concern me—you know it does. I’ve already said I’m sorry about what I said to Valerie and what Adney said to Henry, and I am. But you—Adney and I are both worried about you. You are so isolated out there. Why won’t you come closer to where we are?”

  Her voice rang with what sounded like genuine concern. Maybe that touched Edie, for she took a deep breath of her own before saying, in a gruff voice, “I’m all right. I’ll be fine.”

  If Genna had been smarter, she’d have left it at that. Instead, she had to add, “Not as long as Valerie is there and hanging out with Frank. Who knows what he might do?”

  “They’re gone, thanks to you.” Edie’s voice had the bitter ring I’d heard earlier when I’d mentioned Valerie. “Valerie moved out this morning. If you were so worried about my being isolated ”—she said the word with heavy emphasis—“you shouldn’t have driven her away. And don’t look so surprised. After last night, what did you expect?”

  Genna’s nostrils flared. “What I expect is that she’s moved in with Frank.”

  “She has not!” Edie blazed. “She went back to her aunt’s, which she absolutely hates and which means she’ll have to drive over an hour each way to class and work.”

  Genna drew in a hissing breath. “She’s not the little innocent you think she is. And if you have left her my daddy’s money, so help me, I’ll . . .”

  “Get out of here!” Edie picked up the flowerpot and hurled it to the floor. Dirt and fragments of flower spattered everything, including Genna’s neat slacks. She stepped back as Edie’s hot words erupted over her. “Did you hear me? Get!” Edie swept one arm toward the door. Startled patrons began to gather from the edges of the library as her shrill voice rose to the rafters. “My life is my life! My house is my house! You’ve driven away Valerie, and I had to go down on my knees to Henry to keep him from quitting. I’ll thank you to leave me alone!”

  “You won’t see—” Genna began.

  Edie picked up Mama Bear by both legs and started pounding her head against the counter. The pink flower flapped helplessly. “Stop telling me what to see. Stop telling me what to do! I’m sick of everybody telling me what to do. I’m sick of everything and everybody! Do you hear me? Sick of you all!”

  She hurled poor Mama Bear blindly through the air and caught our oldest resident, who had turned ninety-four his last birthday, square in the chest. He took a startled step back and would have fallen if someone hadn’t steadied him. Edie never noticed.

  She pounded her fists against the countertop, shouting over and over, “I can’t stand any more. It’s too much! Too much! Too much!” She collapsed across the counter, her shoulders heaving with sobs.

  Genna reached out a hand toward her, then drew it back. Anybody could see that touching Edie right then was a risky business. You could put out a hand and draw back a nub.

  A small crowd collected near the counter. Donna Linse ran quickly from the children’s section and through the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. In an instant Alex strode through the door.

  “Edie?” She rested one big hand on the back of Edie’s neck, and her voice sounded like she’d stepped into a normal world. All those years of military training, I suppose. “I need you to help me in the back. Donna will take over the desk.” Like a grown-up dealing with an overwrought child, she led Edie away.

  Genna stood stricken, one hand pressed to her mouth, until the door closed behind them. Then she turned and fled. Her mascara, I noted, was not as waterproof as the advertisers claimed. It ran down her cheeks with her tears.

  11

  I called the library Wednesday to see how Edie was. Olive informed me briskly that she was taking a few days off, and hung up.

  Wednesday afternoon, Clarinda left us a chocolate cake. Eyeing the size of piece Joe Riddley ate after we got home from church dinner that night, I said, “I think I’ll run some of this down to Edie. It won’t do the damage to her clothes budget it could do to ours.”

  I couldn’t figure out where Clarinda had put our plastic containers—she’d been reorganizing the kitchen ever since we moved into our new house three months ago—so I put a couple of slices on a paper plate and wrapped them securely with foil. Then, just as I turned to fetch my shoes, a deputy called and asked if I could come to the sheriff’s detention center for a hearing. By the time I got one of the county’s most frequent guests admitted to a cell for yet another night, it was too late to go anywhere. I left the cake in my car so I could run it by Edie’s in the morning on my way to work.

  Thursday showed up gray and sullen, the kind of day when clouds grumble, the sky glowers, and birds dart out only when necessary. The wind was so cold, I grabbed my coat as I left. The sun was merely a faint brightening in the sky. With the clouds that thick, I figured old Sol would sneak over Georgia without ever showing his face. I wondered if Edie would be sleeping in, since she wasn’t working. If I didn’t see signs of life I would leave the cake on her porch and call her later to say it was there.

  Her crews were already working. I glimpsed Henry’s orange jumpsuit down near a peanut wagon and slowed a little later to watch a shaker do its funny jig with an enormous tree.

  Edie’s blue Saab was parked under the carport, so I figured she must be there.

  I grabbed the cake, started for the back steps, then stopped. The kitchen door stood open. A splash of broken glass littered the porch floor. “Edie?” I called, then louder, “Edie?”

  No answer.

  I shivered in spite of my coat. Except for the distant harvesting machines, I didn’t hear or see a soul. We’d lived out in the country for nearly forty years, but we’d had a pen of dogs and a good neighbor across a pasture and a watermelon patch. Whelans’ place felt as isolated as an island.

  I knew as well as anybody that I should set the cake on the hood of my car and call 911. The operator would dispatch a sheriff’s deputy to check things out.

  But what if Edie had broken the door pane? What if she was muddling around making coffee and fixing to call somebody to come repair it? In the state she’d been in Tuesday, she’d never forgive me if I brought the sheriff down there over nothing and she had to greet him in her bathrobe. “Nosy” and “interfering” were words that came readily to mind.

  I set the cake on the same porch rocker Alex used for her files and tiptoed into the kitchen, careful to step around the glass. “Edie?” I called.

  No answer. The house felt empty and cold. She hadn’t turned the heat up yet.

  I tiptoed through to the hall, peering into the dim living room, dining room, and den. I even opened the door to what must have been Josiah’s bedroom. “Edie?”

  Nothing.

  Since I’d come so far and hadn’t been barreled over by a robber, I might as well make sure she was all right. I climbed the stairs, stopping every three or four steps to call. “Edie? Edie!”

  By the second-floor landing, I was real sorry I hadn’t called 911 downstairs. I stopped at the foot of the third-floor stairs and retrieved the phone from my bag. I nearly punched in the three simple numbers, but I’d come this far. I might as well do the thing thoroughly. Genna said Edie couldn’t hear a thing from her upstairs room. She could still be sleeping.

  I tiptoed up the stairs, my knees protesting at all this activity so early in the morning. “Edie?” I called quietly
.

  The door to her room was closed. I eased it open and peered in.

  Edie lay sprawled on her back on the bed, surrounded by blood. Her head lolled at an improbable angle, and it didn’t take a genius to see her throat had been slashed. Her eyes stared at the ceiling as if wondering how blood could have splattered all the way up there.

  I could only look for a second before backing out. “Dear God.” I slumped against the wall of the staircase, pressing my hand to my mouth and trying to remember how to breathe. Blood rushed to my head, making me dizzy. My ears roared, and my knees threatened to buckle. I will never know how I made it all the way down to the second-floor landing without pitching headfirst down those dark, steep stairs.

  I punched in 911 and could hardly speak coherently to explain where I was and what was needed. When the operator told me a deputy would be right out, I blurted, “Please don’t tell Joe Riddley where I am.” I felt like a fool. “He gets real worried,” I babbled, “and I don’t want him to know I found—I mean, he doesn’t need to be bothered—” I was making things worse, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

  “I understand, Judge. But listen to me. Whoever did that could still be in the house.”

  That was a real cheering thought. I froze, not even daring to look around the dim upstairs hall.

  The operator’s soothing voice continued, “You stay on the phone, now, while you go back outside to your car. I’ll be right here until you assure me you are safe. You hear me?”

  I went real fast down the stairs for somebody who felt a hundred and five.

  “I’m okay now,” I told the operator.

  “Are you in your car?”

  “Not yet, but I’m outside.” I couldn’t talk any longer. I simply didn’t have the strength.

  “Somebody will be right there.” She hung up with a click.

  The porch rocker was as far as I could get. I tottered over and sat down—squarely on the cake. I got up and retrieved the pitiful squashed thing, but it wasn’t going to do anybody any good now, and just the sight of it made me realize that my stomach was fixing to return my breakfast. I dropped the cake to the floor and dashed down the porch steps to the grass just in time.

  Back on the porch I brushed my rear, hoping I hadn’t gotten chocolate on my good beige slacks and hating myself for thinking about such a trivial thing at a time like that. Then I sat down and rocked, wondering how Edie could be dead. Funny, practical, wise, smart Edie. Who would run the literacy council and the bridge club? Who would run the Episcopal church?

  I tried to pray, but could only manage what the Bible calls “groans too deep for words.”

  The world began a long, slow spin. I dropped my head to my lap and rocked in sorrow, bafflement, and pain. I’d been told by Alex, Olive, and Genna that something was going on down at Edie’s, but I hadn’t believed them. If I had—?

  After almost any death, somebody is sure to ask, “Could I have done anything more?” But when death arrives prematurely, summoned by violence, those around the victim are forced to ask, “Could I have done anything to prevent this?” It is a terrible, unanswerable, and eternal wondering. I sat there shaking like Middle Georgia had been whisked to deepest Antarctica. I clutched my coat closer around me, but I was cold from the inside out.

  I knew I ought to get up and go sit in my car where it was warmer, but my head couldn’t get through to my feet. The log says the deputies arrived five minutes after my call. I’d have estimated it was about fifty years before a police cruiser came screaming down the drive and stopped with a spurt of gravel.

  Why had 911 sent the city police instead of the sheriff? At that point I didn’t care.

  Two officers jumped out. One called, “You got trouble down here, Judge?”

  I had to test my voice a couple of times before I got it to work. “I don’t, but Edie Whelan does. She’s in the room at the top of the house, and she’s been brutally murdered.”

  I sat for another freezing century while they ran up the stairs at a rate that made my knees tremble. Eventually one of them came back down, clutching his phone in a way that let me know he’d already sent for reinforcements.

  His face was ashen, his eyes shocked and staring. “You see all that?”

  I nodded, but couldn’t speak. His face had reminded me of exactly what I had seen. I pressed my hand against my mouth to keep what remained of my breakfast down where it belonged.

  He shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t. She was a friend of yours, right?” I could barely manage a nod. “I’m gonna call the Judge—I mean Joe Riddley—to come get you. Then we’ll get to work on this right away.”

  That got me thinking a little more clearly. “Don’t bother Joe Riddley. I’ve got my car. I can get home.”

  He dragged over another rocker, sat down facing me, and took my hands in his. He worked for his dad’s construction company in off-duty hours, and I could feel callouses on his palms. They soothed me. People with calloused palms were people I knew and could understand. Unlike people who chopped somebody else to death.

  I shuddered.

  “Are you all right?” He must be worried I was heading into shock.

  “Sort of. But I never want to see a sight like that again.”

  He started rubbing my cold hands between his warm ones. “You’ve had a rough year.” His voice was gentle. “What’s this—the third body you’ve found since June?”

  “I don’t go looking for them. I just came down today to bring Edie some cake.”

  “Cake?” He looked around, maybe wondering if I’d eaten it while I waited for them.

  I bent down and handed him the remains. “I sat on it.”

  That’s when I started to cry. I cried for the cake. I cried for Edie. I cried for the senselessness of what had happened in that house, and that nobody had been there to prevent it. I cried because I was mad I couldn’t stop crying. Finally I managed to pull myself together enough to blubber, “Get me some tissues from my car.”

  When I had mopped my face and brushed the damp hair away from my forehead, he offered, “You can go on home now. We’ll come by and get a statement from you later.”

  I couldn’t go home. Clarinda would want to talk and talk about all this, and I couldn’t bear that yet. “I’ll be at my office,” I told him.

  I drove away into a gloomy day perfectly coordinated with my mood.

  At the store I managed to run the gamut of cheery good mornings without breaking down, but a perceptive clerk hurried to the pot for steaming coffee. “Go sit down, Judge. You look plumb awful.”

  I fell into my desk chair and took the mug gratefully. The burn of the first swallow reminded me that I was alive. “Come in and shut the door,” I told her. “I want to tell you what’s happened. Then you can tell the others.”

  Cindy called a few minutes later. “Mac? I can’t have coffee this morning.”

  I had completely forgotten our date.

  Her voice sounded as shaky as I felt. She must have gone too far too fast on her morning run. Cindy and Genna were both devoted runners.

  Genna. Had the police been to tell her yet? I’d plumb forgotten her.

  Cindy answered that question. “I’m fine, but Genna—Edie—she’s—” Cindy gulped and gave a little whimper of pain. “Oh, Mac, Edie was murdered at her house last night!”

  I might have blurted out “I found her” if Cindy hadn’t continued to pour out her own part of the story. “I’m over at Genna’s right now. She called me right after the police came, because Adney’s over in Birmingham and she doesn’t know the name of his motel. She can’t reach him until he wakes up. He turns his cell phone off to sleep, and he likes to sleep until eight. She’s asked me to stay with her until she can reach him and he can get home.”

  “I’m glad you’re there. Thank God Genna didn’t sleep at Edie’s last night.”

  Cindy lowered her voice. “That’s what I told her, but she got hysterical. She thinks it’s her fault—that if she’d insisted on st
aying down there, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “More likely she’d be dead, too.”

  I could hear voices in the background. “Are the police still there?”

  “Chief Muggins. He got here right after I did, and he’s asking her an awful lot of questions. You’d think he thought she did it! He keeps asking over and over where she was last night and this morning.”

  “He’s just doing his job.” It took every ounce of charity I possessed to say that. Our police chief heads the list of people I don’t like, and if I weren’t a magistrate, I might not care who knew it. “You do what you need to, honey. We can have coffee another day.” I figured we ought to get off the phone before Chief Muggins realized she was talking to me. Having found the body would make me the prime suspect in his book. I’m not on his Favorite People list either.

  I couldn’t work, of course. After a few futile attempts, I laid my head down on my desk and felt miserable until our door opened. I knew who it was before I opened my eyes. Joe Riddley had been working in the boxwoods, and he carried their musky scent on his clothes.

  He came straight to me and laid his big hand on my head. “You already heard?”

  I nodded. “Cindy called. She’s over at Genna’s. How’d you find out?”

  He stroked my hair. “I met Officer James in his cruiser on my way back from the nursery. He flagged me down to tell me.” He cupped my head in his hand and held it tenderly. “It’s a terrible thing.”

  I reached for a tissue to mop my face. “It sure is.”

  If you think I was being deliberately devious, not telling him I’d found Edie, you are right. Joe Riddley has never been real fond of what he calls my “meddling in murder.” I keep telling him I don’t go looking for bodies, but if I come across one, I can’t just pretend it wasn’t there. He keeps telling me we pay our taxes to hire police to investigate crime, and neither they nor he wants me involved. So far neither of us has convinced the other.

  He gave my scalp a quick squeeze, then sank into his own chair across the way from mine and hung up his cap. We were quiet for a while together.