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

by Patricia Sprinkle

  As I had hoped, I found the desk staffed that afternoon by Mary Ball, whom I had known since she had long brown pig-tails and a lisp. She used to skip into the store on her way home from school and ask for a “lemon thucker”—the only child I ever knew to prefer lemon ones.

  “Hey, Mary,” I greeted her. “This isn’t an emergency, but if you aren’t busy and can give me some information, I’d be grateful.”

  “Sure, Judge. What do you need?” Her voice throbbed with curiosity. “Are you detecting?”

  Mary reads too many mystery novels. Sure, I’ve occasionally been in the local paper for helping the police identify a killer—although our police chief, Charlie Muggins, generally takes the credit and makes it sound like I got in his way. However, Mary is aware of Charlie’s many deficiencies, so she generally gives me more credit than I deserve. I didn’t want her going around the detention center bragging that she’d been helping Judge Yarbrough on a case.

  “Shut your mouth, and don’t you dare let the sheriff or Joe Riddley hear you asking that,” I told her. “I’m just curious who placed the 911 call from Whelans’ place.”

  She looked at me uncertainly. “You did,” she finally said. Bless her heart, she probably thought I was getting prematurely senile.

  “Not that call. The earlier one—back in September when Pete Joyner had a heart attack and Josiah Whelan had his stroke. Who called the paramedics?”

  “I didn’t take that call. Do you know exactly when it was?”

  “Let me see.” I tried to remember the invoice I’d been looking at earlier. “It was the third Saturday in September, because we delivered some herbicides down there that morning.”

  With that information, she found it almost at once, but her forehead creased in a puzzled frown. “It says here the caller was Smitty Smith, but that can’t be right. Wasn’t he in juvey?”

  “No, he’d gotten out the day before.” Joe Riddley had come home Friday night and informed me that as of the next morning, Smitty would be working for us after school and on weekends. I’d told him, “You can hire who you like, but you better keep Smitty out of my road.” Smitty had never been high on my Favorite People list, and he’d gone down considerably one afternoon when he’d taken potshots at me and pretended he was shooting at squirrels.

  When Smitty showed up the next morning, Joe Riddley assigned him to help Paul, our deliveryman, load and unload the truck. Paul’s hard of hearing, so Joe Riddley said he wouldn’t be bothered by Smitty’s foul language. I’d forgotten that Smitty’s first day was the same day Paul made that big delivery of herbicide to Whelan Grove.

  Trust Smitty to have a cell phone, probably paid for with some of his ill-gotten gains before he was arrested. But thank heavens he did. It might have saved Josiah’s life. Pete was dead before the paramedics got there.

  I’d avoided Smitty ever since, so how the Sam Hill was I going to invite him into my office for a chat without raising eyebrows all over the store—not to mention word getting back to Joe Riddley? I didn’t plan to do any detecting, mind, or put myself in any danger—although talking to Smitty privately would require a bit of caution. I just wanted to satisfy my natural curiosity about what went on that day and ease Daisy’s mind.

  Call it luck or call it providence, Smitty was standing down at the back corner of our parking lot having a smoke when I pulled in. I have strong feelings about kids smoking, and I don’t mind airing them, but right then I was willing to overlook Smitty’s health to talk about Pete Joyner’s final morning.

  I moseyed back that way. Smitty dropped the cigarette like it had burnt him and gave me a smarmy smile while he surreptitiously ground it out with one toe. “Afternoon, Judge. You want something? I’m on break.”

  It was chilly to be standing in a parking lot near dusk, but I didn’t mention that. I was busy figuring out that as smart as Smitty was, there wasn’t any point trying to work around to what I wanted. I might as well be honest. Maybe it would inspire him.

  “I understand you made the 911 call the morning Josiah Whelan had his stroke. Did you see or hear what went on down there before that?”

  He tilted his chin and managed to convey the impression that he was lounging against something, though he was five feet from the nearest wall. “I might have. ”

  “So what happened?”

  He gave me a considering look, like he was calculating what it might be worth to me. Something in my eye made him shift in his tracks and admit, “I don’t know exactly. The old man is watching us unload when the ni—” He caught my eye and said quickly, “The black dude comes down the drive in a truck. He calls out the window to old man Whelan, ‘I need to talk to you. It’s real important.’ So old man Whelan—”

  “Mr. Whelan,” I corrected him.

  “Mr. Whelan.” The way he emphasized it, it was more insulting than the other had been. “He heads over that way, and the black dude climbs out of his truck and they go over next to a funny little shed with a chimney. We were unloading stuff, so we didn’t pay them much attention. I did see them both start waving their arms, but didn’t think much about it. Then I needed to—uh—” His eyes slid away from mine.

  I suspected the sentence should end “have a smoke,” but I didn’t interrupt, and ignored the blank in his sentence as he went on.

  “—so I went around behind the shed. I didn’t mean to listen, but they were talking loud and couldn’t see me.” Like any good storyteller, Smitty stopped until I prompted him.

  “So what did you hear?”

  “Well, they were in the middle of something by then. First the old—Mr. Whelan goes, ‘You got no call to come around here saying stuff like that. Git, now! Git on home!’ Then the black dude goes, ‘I got this paper to prove it. I’m not tellin’ you for me, but for Henry. You gotta do the right thing by him. You know what you done.’

  “ ‘I ain’t done nothing,’ Mr. Whelan yells. ‘I don’t know what you got in your hand, but what you’re sayin’ is a pack of lies and you damn well know it. You’ve worked shoulder to shoulder with me well nigh on fifty years. You know what kind of man I am.’

  “ ‘I know what you done, too,’ ” the black man goes. ‘It says so, right here. I don’t want nothin’ for me, but you owe Henry. I’ve done called him to get down here tomorrow, and I’m gonna tell him what’s what. He deserves to know.’

  “Mr. Whelan goes, ‘I’ll see you in hell, first! Lemme see that!’ I hear paper tearing, and the black dude goes, ‘Don’t you tear that! It was in my mama’s Bible. It’s all there, in black and white.’ Then he gives a sob, like, and says, ‘Ain’t that funny? Right there, in black and white.’ ”

  Smitty was not only rolling the story off like lines in a play, but his face and his body were changing as he spoke. I could almost see Josiah and Pete standing before me. “You ought to try out for that play they’re doing over at the DuBose Center,” I told him. But I didn’t doubt his word. I’d heard him recite whole conversations before, and he was a reliable witness. Not reliable in a lot of other ways, maybe, but a reliable repeater of what he had heard.

  He got distracted by what I’d said. “You think I could get a part?”

  “They’d be lucky to have you. But what happened then?”

  Smitty shook his head. “It got scary. Mr. Whelan starts yelling so loud, I look around the corner. He’s jumping up and down and waving his fists, and screaming, ‘Git on home, you hear me? Git on! Git on!’ He kept screamin’ and screamin,’ then I heard this funny sound, like chokin’ or sump’n, and he fell down on the ground and started jerking, makin’ real funny noises. The black dude fell down on his knees beside him, yellin’, ‘Don’t you die on me! I didn’t mean you to die!’ And he took the old man under his arms and started dragging him down the road. The old man was yelling so, I thought sure Paul would come help, but he didn’t. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Paul’s almost deaf,” I reminded him.

  “I hadn’t been around him long enough to know that
. I figured he didn’t want to get involved. I was about to go back in, too, and leave them to it when all of a sudden the black dude grabs his chest and pitches down on top of the old one, like somebody in the movies. That’s when I whipped out my phone and called 911.”

  “Good work,” I told him. “You probably saved Josiah’s life.”

  I don’t know which of us was more surprised by that praise.

  22

  It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to guess that paper was Pete Joyner’s birth certificate, naming Josiah as his daddy. It made me sick. How could Josiah work beside Pete all those years and never let on who he was? Now Henry must be heading to the one person he figured could give him some answers, and he probably didn’t know how bad Josiah’s condition was. I hated to think of him storming in on poor Josiah without anybody else around.

  I tried to reach Joe Riddley, but they said down at the nursery he’d gone to run an errand, so I left him a note on his desk and a message at the nursery: Gone to see Josiah. Back around seven or so. Go on home and make a sandwich. He and Bo wouldn’t miss me much. There was an old World War II movie on television, and Joe Riddley’s life isn’t complete without one of those every week or two.

  I drove as fast as I dared and faster than the law allows, glad to be going against traffic. Augusta, like other cities in America, is gobbling up charming little towns and the farmland around them as hoards of people flock out of the city to “get away from it all.” They leave at dawn, reach home at dusk, drive an hour each way every day, and spend their weekends paying homage to the house god. Oddly, they don’t seem to realize that their subdivisions—and others sprouting up around them—will change those towns and farming communities into places exactly like the ones they left. I dread the day when I hear somebody refer to my home-town as a “bedroom community.”

  I knew why I was fuming at development, though. To keep from thinking about the way Josiah used to play with Pete and me when we were little, teasing us to make us giggle, lifting us to branches so we could climb a tree, standing below in case we fell, swinging Pete up over his head while Pete shrieked with laughter.

  I also remembered Pete, when he was about twelve, pulling Edie as a chubby toddler around and around the driveway circle in a little red wagon. Starting when he was a teenager, Pete spent a lot of time working beside Josiah in the grove. Josiah used to brag that Pete knew the business better than he did.

  How could he? I wanted to scream. How could he go his whole life denying his own son?

  I thought I would smother from anger and grief.

  I wondered why I hadn’t suspected, all those afternoons I’d sat under the trees with Sally while Josiah teased me and Mary brought me buttermilk. I couldn’t remember Josiah paying her any special attention, but I was only a child. Had anybody else noticed? Maybe not. Like Mama used to say, “The hardest things to notice are those you’ve looked at all your life.”

  Then I remembered Clarinda saying, “The Joyners have worked for Whelans since Elijah took off in the heavenly chariot. Some folks say—but never mind that.” Obviously, in her community, some people knew.

  Those thoughts occupied me until I reached Golden Years. The winter sun was going down by then, slanting broad rays across the parking lot. Since I didn’t know Henry’s car, I didn’t waste time looking for it, but clutched my coat around me against the wind and ran to the front door. I scribbled my signature on the visitors’ register and dashed toward Josiah’s room.

  I’d known the way, and Henry must have had to look for the place, because although he’d been gone from home quite a while, he was just entering Josiah’s door as I came down the hall. I almost didn’t recognize him in jeans and a red T-shirt.

  I got to the doorway in time to see him step toward the bed, and to watch his shoulders sag as he caught sight of the wrecked man in the bed.

  “Hello, Henry,” I said from behind him.

  He whirled around. “Miss Mac! What you doin’ here?”

  “Same thing you are, I reckon. Looking for some answers. Is Josiah awake?”

  He nodded. “I guess you could say that.” His voice was bitter.

  I pushed past him to the side of the bed. The smell of urine and age nearly overpowered me, and I could scarcely see with the blinds closed. On the pillow, though, Josiah’s eyes shone in the dimness. He made a series of garbled noises and raised his good hand.

  “Hello, ” I said cheerfully. “I’ve come to see you, along with somebody else. I’m going to open the blinds, okay?”

  I interpreted a series of grunts as permission. The light was not kind to Josiah’s face, but he seemed to welcome it on his skin. His sunken condition still shocked me, but not as much as it did Henry. From his expression, I suspected he wished he could turn and run.

  I pulled the visitor’s chair close to the bed. Might as well be comfortable. This could take a while. “Here’s Henry Joyner, come to see you.” I motioned Henry to come closer.

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Josiah bobbed his head with excitement. His good hand rose a few inches from the coverlet and tears dribbled down his cheeks and onto his pillow. Is anything sadder than not being able to wipe away your own tears?

  I reached for a tissue and dabbed his cheeks. “Is that better? Joe Riddley couldn’t come, but I wanted to stop in and say hello.”

  His hand reached for mine, so dry it whispered against my palm.

  “Henry wanted to see you, too, and tell you how the harvest is going.” I nodded at Henry.

  Henry still hadn’t moved.

  I pointed for him to go around to the other side of the bed. He did. As he stood looking down, I watched his tense anger dissolve into pity for the man he’d loved all his life.

  He bent down and his voice was husky. “Hey, Mister Josiah. We’re doin’ our best to get the crop in, in spite of all this rain we’ve been having. You’re going to have a good yield this year, particularly from the Schleys.”

  “Unh. Unh. Unh.” Josiah nodded his head and tried to smile.

  “And those new Sumners are going to make good this year, too. I’m not sure about the Desirables, though. Their limbs break pretty easy.”

  “Unh, unh, unh!” Josiah took his good hand from mine and made chopping right-angled motions.

  I had no idea what he was doing, but Henry nodded. “Daddy told me you have to bend the branches at right angles to the trunk. I saw where you’d done that on some of them, and they’re holding up so far, but we’ll have to see how well they produce before we put in any more.”

  Josiah nodded and reached his good hand across his shrunken body to grasp Henry’s. “Pee? Pee?” he asked.

  I looked around for a urinal, but Henry seemed to have less problem than I did understanding what the old man wanted. “Daddy’s not with us anymore, I’m afraid. He passed in September, right after you got sick. Heart attack.”

  “Pee? Pee!” Josiah’s eyes filled with tears again, and I did tissue duty for a second time. “Eee. Eee.” Streams coursed down his cheeks.

  Even I could understand that. “Yes, Edie’s gone, too,” I agreed, wiping his face again and again. “We all miss her very much.”

  He turned his gaze to Henry, and another stream of garbled words came from his mouth. When he saw we didn’t understand, he got frustrated and started slapping his good hand on his own chest and then at Henry. “Gwo. Gwo. Gwo! Uuuu. Uuuu. Gwo!”

  It sounded like a vowel exercise to me, and I could tell Henry was baffled, too.

  “Don’t get overexcited,” I told him, pinning his agitated hand with my own. “Henry’s got some questions to ask you. Will you try to answer?”

  Josiah didn’t nod, and I wasn’t sure he understood.

  Henry reached for his shirt pocket. “Mama found something last Sunday a week, in Grandmama’s Bible. Mary, Daddy’s mama. Do you remember her?”

  “May.” Josiah nodded.

  I began to wish I hadn’t come. Henry was handling this fine. He looked over at me, and the way
his nostrils flared, I suspected he wished I weren’t there, too. But Josiah had reached for my hand again, and was clutching it so tight he nearly cut off my circulation.

  Henry pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. When Josiah saw what it was, he pushed his head deeper into the pillow. Anybody could tell that he recognized it. His eyes turned anxiously to meet mine. “Eh,” he said. “Ehmay.”

  I tried to keep my disgust from showing. “Listen to Henry,” I told him.

  As Henry held the paper toward him, though, I could see that it was not, as I had expected, a birth certificate. It seemed to be a letter.

  Henry waved the paper over the bed so it rattled—or was that his hand trembling? Josiah squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his mouth, refusing to look at it.

  “This is a letter from your daddy, Mister Josiah, acknowledging that my daddy—‘Peter Joyner, son of Mary Joyner,’ it says right here”—Henry pointed with a long brown finger—“was his grandson.”

  Josiah squeezed his eyes tighter, as if that could make us go away.

  Henry’s voice trembled and broke as he asked, “Are you my granddaddy? Are you? Why didn’t you ever tell us?”

  Josiah’s eyes flew open. “Oh!” He lifted his fist and brought it down in fury on the coverlet. “Oh! Oh! Eh! Eh!” When we didn’t understand him, his shouts rose louder and louder.

  A nurse rushed into the room. She was almost broader than she was tall, and she pushed me aside like a minnow. “It’s okay, Mister J.” She bent over her thrashing patient. “It’s okay. I’m here. You’re going to be all right.” She looked from Henry to me with a glare. “You all need to leave. You’re upsetting my patient.”

  “Not half as much as he’s upsetting us,” I snapped. “We’re trying to get some information out of him, and he’s refusing to answer. He was perfectly fine, until—”

  “I’m sorry, but whatever it is you need to know, you’ll have to find out some other way. We can’t have him excited. It’s not good for him.”

  I might have argued further, but a voice growled in the doorway. “Little Bit, why are you plaguing the living daylights out of Josiah?”