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

by Patricia Sprinkle

  23

  Joe Riddley crossed the room and put his hand on Josiah’s shoulder. “Calm down, old buddy. I’m gonna take Mac out and let you get some rest. We’ll be back another time, okay?”

  Josiah looked up at him, pleading with his eyes for somebody to understand. “Eh. May. Pee. Hey! Eh. May. Pee. Hey!” Maybe it was a weird way of counting.

  Joe Riddley tightened his hand on Josiah’s shoulder, then turned and led the way from the room. “Come on, MacLaren. Henry.” We followed him out.

  I looked back at the bed as I left. The nurse was just straightening up from smoothing his covers. “Could we talk to you a minute?” I asked her.

  She nodded, and bent to tell him, “I’m going to walk them out the door, then I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  He turned his head away, dismissing us.

  The nurse closed the door behind her. Henry was already striding around the corner toward the front door. I figured I’d better start right in before Joe Riddley could start in on me.

  “Can you tell what he’s saying when he yells like that?”

  The nurse, identified on her name badge as JANE GROGG, shook her head. “Not always. ‘Oh’ means ‘no’—I know that because he says it a lot.” She smiled, showing a gold tooth. “And ‘Eee’ was what he called his daughter, Miss Edie. He misses her so much. We all do, too. I swan, I never imagined when she came last Tuesday morning that I’d never see her again. And toward the end, Mr. J. got so mad at the lawyer that we had our work cut out calming him down and didn’t even get to tell her good-bye. Who’d have thought she’d go before him? It just goes to show, don’t it? Well, I better get back to my patient. You all come back soon, and don’t feel bad about what happened in there. Folks who have strokes are prone to get real emotional.”

  Folks who’ve just had a shameful secret uncovered are prone to get emotional, too, but I didn’t point that out.

  As I trotted behind Joe Riddley to the parking lot, I expected a lecture on running off and getting involved in mysteries. Instead, he went striding toward Henry, who was standing beside a sporty yellow convertible parked under a halogen light, rhythmically pounding one fist on its hood.

  “Son?” I heard Joe Riddley ask in a mild voice. “You want to talk about what’s wrong?”

  I panted up behind him, shivering. It was really cold now that the sun was down.

  Henry turned, his face twisted with rage and grief. “Don’t call me son! I’m not your son. I’m his grandson! How could he—how could he—how could they—?” That’s as far as he got.

  “Mind telling me what that’s all about?” Joe Riddley inquired.

  Henry fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the crumpled paper, and handed it over.

  Joe Riddley read it silently, then handed it back. “It wasn’t Josiah.” I don’t know who was more surprised, Henry or me. Joe Riddley spoke like he knew what he was talking about.

  “Of course it was Josiah.” The word was ugly in Henry’s mouth. “All those years—all those years!” He pulled back one leg and kicked the tire so hard the car shuddered.

  “It wasn’t Josiah,” Joe Riddley repeated. “Josiah was overseas in the army back then.”

  “How do you know so much?” I demanded from behind him.

  He answered me without turning away from Henry. “Because Josiah always called me his little buddy, and after he went in the army, he sent me postcards a few times a year. He sent me a card from Germany for my sixth birthday, along with a little American flag, saying he sure had missed America the year he’d been gone and he hoped I’d grow up to be proud of my country. I gave that flag to Mary as a present for the baby when Pete was born seven months later. It was the best thing I had to give.”

  “But I remember him tossing Pete into the air,” I protested. “I remember that real clear.”

  “Then Pete must have been at least two, because Josiah didn’t come home from Germany until I was eight.” That made sense. Surely Josiah wouldn’t have thrown an infant up in the air.

  “But why would his daddy write that letter, then?”

  “It must have been Edward, Josiah’s brother.” Joe Riddley spoke slowly, working it out as he went along. “Ed was in a car wreck and died, and now that I think about it, that was the winter before Pete was born. But Ed lived a couple of days in the hospital. Maybe he told his daddy what he had done. I know it was that winter, because his was the first funeral I ever attended. Daddy told Mama that a boy of six was plenty old enough to go to a funeral, and I ought to go to at least one before somebody in the family died, so I’d know how to behave when I needed to.”

  “That must be what Josiah was trying to say.” I was trying to put it all together. “ ‘Eh, May, Pee, Hey’ must mean Edward, Mary, Pete, Henry. It wasn’t Josiah, Henry! It wasn’t!” I felt like a huge rock had been lifted from my back.

  Henry glared from one of us to the other, his eyes bloodshot from too much anger and unshed tears. “Is that supposed to make me feel all better?”

  “No.” Joe Riddley sounded as sad as I felt. “I’m not sure Edward would have done the right thing by Mary if he’d lived. I got whipped once for repeating in public something my mother said to Daddy about Edward Whelan being more interested in Edward than in anybody else. I don’t even know what the right thing would have been around here back then. But I do know that before the baby was born, Mr. Whelan built Mary her little house and deeded her two acres of land. That must have been when he gave her the letter, too.”

  Henry cried out, his mouth twisted with rage, “Two acres! Is that what my daddy was worth?”

  “You know better than that,” Joe Riddley said sternly. “The Whelans loved your daddy. Not like they should have, maybe. Old attitudes die hard. But they did make sure he and Mary always had food to eat, a roof over their heads, and good jobs on the homeplace. Respect, too. And Josiah’s done you no harm. He loved you, coming up. I’m not sure he knew until just now what Edward did.”

  “Pete told him,” I said quietly. “It was reading that letter that gave Josiah his stroke. And trying to save Josiah’s life killed Pete.”

  “How do you know so much?” Joe Riddley threw my question back at me.

  “Smitty overheard them.” I repeated what Smitty had said. Then I turned to Henry. “Josiah is a sick old man.”

  Henry blew through his nostrils and turned so his face was shaded from the light. “Nobody told me how bad he is. But I can’t stay around here, knowing all this. I ought to get in this car right now, ride off, and never come back.” He was talking more to himself than to us. “I haven’t left a thing in Georgia I can’t find somewhere else.”

  “Your mama’s here,” I reminded him.

  “I can send for her when I get settled somewhere. She was brought up down near Valdosta, anyway. She never saw Hopemore until she married daddy.”

  “The sheriff won’t let you leave yet. He thinks you killed Edie. I suggested Saturday you ought to hire a lawyer. Now I’m warning you.” It had occurred to me that this gave Henry what Buster hadn’t had before: a good motive for murder.

  Joe Riddley put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, but somehow he didn’t feel mad. It was more the “I’m right here with you, Little Bit” kind of squeeze.

  Henry rared back like a startled horse. “He’s got no evidence against me. Sure, somebody stole my machete out of the shed—”

  “He’s found more than that.”

  “What?”

  “A pair of your coveralls showed up under a bush.”

  “I told him a pair went missing.”

  “He’s sent them to forensics. They had blood on them.”

  “What?”

  I nodded. “He ought to get a report back sometime in the next few days. Let’s hope there’s evidence somebody besides you wore them.”

  “There better be, because I did not kill Edie.” He waved the paper at me. “But when you tell him about this, he’ll think I had a motive, won’t he? And executing me would
solve a lot of problems around here.”

  He jerked his door open and jumped into the car. We barely had time to get out of the way before he backed up and roared off.

  Joe Riddley must have seen how worn out I was, because he suggested we stop at a good steak place on our way home. It was a bit out of our way, the place where people took their honeys, so I hoped maybe he wasn’t too mad.

  When we got there, I let him go on in and stayed in my car long enough to call Clarinda. She said Daisy was a little calmer, and I explained what had just happened. “Some folks been suspecting something like that a long time,” she told me. “Both Pete and Henry got the Whelan eyes.” She grunted a couple of times, then said, “Edward,” like she was thinking that over. “That figures. He always was the wild one. I couldn’t figure Josiah for—well, you know. You think Henry’s on his way back to Daisy’s?”

  I sighed out my distress. “Your guess is as good as mine. Meanwhile, I’d better go join Joe Riddley. We’ve stopped by Candlelight Inn. We came in different cars, and he’s already inside. If I don’t get in there pretty soon, he’ll order my steak well done to spite me.”

  Clarinda cackled. “Everybody in there who doesn’t know you two will think you’re married folks having an affair on the side, coming separately and all. Go add spice to their dinners. Snuggle up to him real good.”

  I went in, came up behind him, and gave him a hug around the neck. “You’d be a nice person to have an affair with,” I whispered in his ear.

  The speed with which he disentangled himself and the sour look he gave me dispelled anybody’s false impression. “You don’t need to try and sweeten me up.” He reached for a roll and the butter. “You know good and well that following Henry to Josiah’s comes under the heading of meddling in things that don’t concern you, which you had flat-out promised me you wouldn’t do again.”

  I waited while the waitress set salads in front of us, then asked her, “Did he tell you I wanted my steak well done?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am, he told us you like it medium.”

  I was about to give him a smile of thanks when I saw that he’d had them put ranch dressing on my salad instead of bleu cheese.

  “Wouldn’t want to waste an expensive piece of meat.” He picked up a big chunk of bleu cheese from his own salad and smacked his lips before eating it whole.

  I tried to scrape dressing off my lettuce, but it might as well have been welded on. “You have to agree it was good you were able to clear up that misunderstanding,” I pointed out. “If I hadn’t gone, you wouldn’t have followed me, and Henry would still be thinking Josiah was Pete’s daddy and hadn’t admitted it all those years. Remember how we were talking in Sunday school a week or so ago about the way God brings good out of things that don’t seem good at the time? Maybe—”

  “Don’t you go blamin’ God for your meddling in Josiah’s business,” Joe Riddley warned. “I can’t get out of this booth fast enough if lightning strikes.”

  “You really think Josiah didn’t know Pete was Edward’s son? Now that I know to look for it, Pete had a lot of mannerisms that were like Josiah’s daddy. And the Whelan eyes.”

  Joe Riddley swabbed up the last of his dressing with a piece of lettuce. “Folks can generally miss something right under their noses if they choose not to see it. Like you not seeing how dangerous it is for you to get mixed up in this stuff. One of these days your guardian angel is gonna throw up her hands and go home, and I’m gonna be looking for a replacement wife.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  He set down his fork after finishing the salad and gave me a solemn look. “The day after your funeral. I swear it, if you don’t straighten up and fly right. Now start eating. You know I don’t like driving these roads after dark.”

  I bent toward my salad plate and started picking out bits that hadn’t been slathered with dressing. He motioned to the waitress. “Could we have another salad with bleu cheese dressing, please? I got her order mixed up.”

  After she removed the plate, he covered my hand with his. “You know I love and appreciate you, honey. I even appreciate the fact that once you get your teeth into something worthwhile, you don’t let it go until it’s finished. Lulu takes after you that way. But I don’t want to lose you. Recent months have taught me to be glad for every day we’ve got together, and I want a lot of them.”

  My throat was all choked up, but I managed to gulp out, “Me, too.”

  “So I want to make you a deal. Don’t you go places without me. Let me know ahead of time, and I’ll come along. Can you agree to that?”

  “I’d be proud to have you.”

  Neither of us imagined then how hard that bargain was going to be to keep.

  When we got home, I took off my clothes and put on a robe, planning to put my feet up a while before bed. I’d barely gotten settled good on the sofa, Lulu’s head in my lap, when the phone rang. “Can you get that?” I asked Joe Riddley. His recliner was beside the phone.

  “It’s probably somebody wanting you down at the jail.” But he muted the television and growled, “Yes?” into the receiver. In an instant, he turned into Mr. Sweetness and Light. “Why, sure, she’s right here.” He held it in my direction.

  As I padded barefoot across the room, I muttered, “If I have to go back out tonight, I may shoot somebody. I don’t remember you having to go out that much at night.”

  “That’s because you always turned over and went back to sleep.”

  I snatched the phone and said, in a voice a tad less than charming, “Judge Yarbrough.”

  “Mac?” Meriwether’s voice was more amused than worried.

  “Oh, honey, I was afraid you were a pesky deputy wanting me down at the jail. Has the baby come?”

  “Stop asking me that.” Now she sounded more like a normal pregnant lady, crabby as all get-out. “The baby hasn’t come, I am sleeping terribly, and I feel big as an eighteen-wheeler. But what I wanted to tell you is that we solved the mystery of the ringing alarm. For two weeks, our security alarm has gone off at all hours. Nobody could figure out who was tripping it.”

  “Well, tell me. Who’d be dumb enough to break in in the middle of a workday?”

  She laughed. “Three baby kittens. Apparently they’ve been moving around at night, which triggered the motion sensors. They were living in a big wicker basket, and this afternoon Tyrone startled them when he was putting up merchandise. When he tried to grab them, the black one took off straight up the shelves and leaped for another shelf, but she caught on the security wire to the back fire door—which we keep armed—and yanked it out. She fell and tumbled right into Tyrone’s arms. When I got there, I don’t know who was happier, that kitten or Tyrone.”

  “I guess you’re pretty happy, too, to know nobody’s breaking in.”

  She laughed again. “I am. And the kittens are darling. We can’t keep them in the warehouse, obviously, but Tyrone wants the one he caught. Says he’s gonna name her Holly. I’m trying to find homes for two gray males. Do you reckon Ridd and Martha might take them? They could keep the mice down in their new barn.”

  “We’ve already named them Mac and J.R.,” I heard her husband call in the background.

  “I’ll ask Martha about the kittens,” I told her, “but you tell Jed for me that Ridd’s got two new pigs, and I’ve named them Jed and DuBose.”

  When I hung up, I headed to the kitchen for a bowl of ice cream with hot fudge sauce. “One of these days I’m gonna diet,” I promised Lulu, who was hovering at my feet hoping she’d get a scoop of ice cream, too, “but I can’t as long as ice cream and hot fudge keep appearing in the refrigerator. You and I both know I don’t buy them.”

  “You fixing ice cream?” called the culprit from the next room.

  I fixed us each a bowl and gave Lulu a couple of spoonfuls, then let her out into the backyard. As I carried ours to the living room, I said, “If you’ll turn that thing off a minute, I’ll tell you what Meriwether said.”

&nbs
p; The day would have ended on a cheerful note if the telephone hadn’t rung again.

  24

  “Oh, Mac, I’m so sorry to bother you this late.” It was Genna, breathless and flustered. “I meant to call you this afternoon, but things got hectic and I completely forgot.”

  She scarcely gave my ears time to absorb one sentence before she was off and running with another. I was still getting my head around “hectic” as a description for her afternoon when she was halfway around another track. “. . . called and asked what I want Edie buried in. I can’t decide something like that! I mean, I wouldn’t have any idea what she’d like to wear. It won’t be an open casket, of course . . .”

  My memory darted to Edie as I’d last seen her and I shuddered. No, it wouldn’t be an open casket.

  I felt so dizzy, I pulled up a straight chair behind me and sat down. Genna was still rattling along.

  “. . . don’t think I can stand to see the room yet. But they want them by ten tomorrow morning, and I understand you found her, so you’ve already been up there, so I wondered if maybe . . . I mean, I know it’s a lot to ask, but Cindy said she thought you might be willing to. If you don’t want to, just say so, but if you would, I would be eternally grateful. Adney would, too. I thought about asking Alex, but I don’t know her all that well, and Olive—she and Edie didn’t dress anything alike—”

  “You want me to pick a dress for Edie to be buried in?” I’d finally pieced that much together.

  “Oh, would you?” She acted like I’d offered, not merely asked for clarification. “That is wonderful! I am so grateful. If ever there is anything I can do for you, please let me know. This has all been so hard on Adney and me. We could not have gotten through it without you and your sweet family, and I want you to know that. We both appreciate you.”

  That woman at the jail a few hours ago must have been Genna’s evil twin. Before I could say another word, Genna cooed, “The sheriff said they’re finished with the house, so I’ll meet you over there at eight tomorrow morning to let you in. Remember, the funeral home needs the outfit before ten. Thank you so much.”