Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  “Not right off.” Genna was a social butterfly who worshiped at the temple of the elegant lifestyle according to the gospel of Southern Living. Except for painting birdhouses to sell in benefit craft shows, she seemed to do little that didn’t involve the tennis court, golf course, chic restaurants, women’s clubs, a new women’s gym, or the beauty parlor.

  Alex took a sip of tea, found it cold, and leaned over to pour the rest into a potted ficus. “Were Genna and Edie close when Genna was growing up?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “No. Genna was eight when her parents divorced and her daddy bought the pharmacy and moved here. He had custody, for some reason, and Genna arrived furious that he’d moved her away from Memphis, where her mother still lived. Possibly she hoped her parents would get back together, I don’t know, but when Wick married Edie the next year, you wouldn’t believe the devious tricks that child tried—first to block the marriage, then to sabotage it. I felt sorry for Edie, and just as sorry for Genna. The only woman she related to was Sally Whelan, Josiah’s mother, who had moved back in with him when his wife died. Old as Sally was, she and Genna got along like two little girls. They both loved ruffled dresses and big hair bows, elaborate tea parties with baby dolls, painting their fingernails and trying out new shades of lipsticks. I sometimes thought Genna was the granddaughter Sally wished Edie had been.”

  “Did that bother Edie?” Alex held up her teacup with a silent question and I nodded. While she refilled both cups, I kept talking—as much to myself as to her.

  “No, I think both Genna and Edie would have been glad for Genna to stay out at the pecan grove until she went to college, but Josiah had to put Sally in a nursing home when Genna was sixteen. Genna got so upset she asked to live with her mother. Wick took her back to Memphis, and he and Edie breathed a sigh of relief—until she came back six months later.”

  “Why?” Alex asked the question without turning around.

  “Nobody ever said, and I never heard her mother mentioned again. Genna was nicer to Edie after that, for what it’s worth, but she didn’t come back to Hopemore after college. She worked in Birmingham for years, in a hospital records department.”

  Alex handed me my tea. “Makes me nervous to think of somebody that fluffy working on people’s medical records. Was that where she met Adney? He sells hospital supplies, right?”

  “Back then it was pharmaceuticals, and Wick’s store was in his territory, too. Wick was delighted when Adney and Genna met and got married five years ago. He was higher than a stockbroker’s promises when they moved to Hopemore three years later and bought one of those big houses by the golf course out on—” I stopped, embarrassed. Joe Riddley had called the street “High Mortgage Lane” for so long, I’d forgotten its real name.

  Fortunately, Alex was too busy savoring her own tea to wonder why I’d cut off in midsentence. “Well, I don’t think Genna is Edie’s problem.” She settled back in her chair. “They seem to get along okay now.” She offered me the cookies, took a piece of shortbread, and bit off a sizeable chunk. “I do love this stuff,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs. “And I am a devious person. The real reason I invited you over here was so I could justify eating it.”

  “Joe Riddley already warned me you were devious. He said you pulled strings to get Edie elected chair of the library board so you could get what you wanted in the new children’s wing.”

  She threw back her head and laughed so hard I saw her back teeth. “Whoo-ee, girl, I sure am glad that man is married to you, not me. He sees too much. But Edie and I got an outstanding children’s section, didn’t we?”

  “Outstanding,” I agreed.

  “This town is entitled to a good library, and I am devoted to seeing that people get what they are entitled to. Take Edie, now. She has thirty years’ experience in administration as a volunteer, but I can’t pay her her fair worth because she’s only had three years of college and never worked except one summer, for Wick.”

  “And married him the next Christmas,” I added.

  “Is that right? Well, I am dedicated to making sure that woman finishes her degree and gets the salary she’s entitled to. She had already gone back to college before Wick died, thinking she might need to work and support them both if his addiction got worse. When she came to work here, she changed her major to library science, and she’s been working real hard.”

  “School on top of the rest she’s doing? Even Edie can’t do everything.”

  “She makes a good stab at it. She dropped out this semester when her daddy got sick, but she only lacks six credits to graduate. Once her daddy gets better, she ought to be able to whip out that degree in one more semester. Then I want her to go for her master’s. She ought to be running a library—here or somewhere else.”

  I brushed crumbs from my lap. “I’d rate Josiah’s chances of getting better about the same as my winning the lottery—which I never enter.”

  Alex drained her cup and set it on the tray. “Well, I wish Edie would stop feeling guilty about putting him in that place. I keep telling her she did what she had to do.”

  “She has bad associations with the place. Her grandmother died there.”

  Alex swivelled around to give me a long level look. “What was the matter with her?”

  “Alzheimer’s, probably, although back then they weren’t sure enough to call it that.”

  “I heard something about that. What were her symptoms?”

  “First she got forgetful. Then she got real belligerent over any little thing. Finally she got so she’d wander off, show up places and have no idea where she was. Josiah tried to keep her at home. He hired Daisy, Pete Joyner’s wife, to stay with her, and Genna watched her some after school, but Sally would slip away. When Josiah came back from the grocery store one day and found her out by the road naked as the mockingbird singing above her, pitching nuts at cars passing on the road, he knew he couldn’t keep her at home any longer.”

  Alex shoved back her chair, got up, and started pacing. Back and forth, like a caged lion, darting looks my way now and then. I waited, figuring she’d get around to whatever she wanted to say in her own time. I hoped it wouldn’t take up much more of mine.

  Finally she stopped, gripped the back of her chair for support, and demanded, “You don’t reckon Edie could be getting what her grandmother had, do you?”

  Alzheimer’s is like cancer. A lot of people think if they don’t say it, they won’t get it. But I could tell by Alex’s intense tone that this was, finally, the question she’d brought me across town to ask.

  I thought it over and gave her my best shot at a reply. “I doubt it. Sally was past eighty before she showed any symptoms, and nobody else in the family has had it.” I set my cup on the desk. “I appreciate the tea, so here’s my valued opinion: You are making a forest out of a couple of pinecones. Either Edie’s under too much stress or she’s getting forgetful like the rest of us.”

  I picked up my pocketbook and headed out. As I opened the door, Olive was standing so close she had to have been eavesdropping again. She didn’t apologize, but pushed past me and stormed, “You two don’t get it, do you? Edie isn’t forgetful. This is all Valerie’s doing—and that jerk she’s going around with.”

  I’m not used to accepting opinions as evidence. “Why should you think that?”

  “What does anybody know about that girl?” Olive flung back.

  Alex and I exchanged a look. Alex shrugged. “I know what Edie’s told me. Valerie rents an upstairs bedroom with a bath, and they share the kitchen. Edie likes her. I know that. She says Valerie cooks dinner for her some nights, and Edie’s teaching her to sew.”

  “She works for Meriwether DuBose’s new company,” was all I had to contribute.

  Meriwether’s Pots of Luck sold pots of all sorts, shapes, and sizes by catalogue and Internet. Most of her employees were young adults, and Meriwether had arranged the work schedule so they could attend community college classes in the morning, then work
from noon until eight. She’d confided to me, “That will be better for me, anyway, once the baby comes. I’ll be home in the morning, we’ll have a sitter for the afternoon, and Jed will take over at suppertime.” Her first child was due in a month, and curiosity was running high. Meriwether and Jed, who hadn’t married until they were past thirty,3 refused to say if the baby was a girl or a boy.

  “I don’t care who she works for, I don’t think she’s safe to have around.” Olive looked like she was willing to stand with her back against the door and discuss this forever.

  Alex nodded toward her telephone. “Could you call Ms. DuBose, Judge, and ask what she thinks of Valerie?” She didn’t add “to satisfy Olive,” but it hovered in the air.

  I was one of Meriwether’s grandmother’s oldest friends and had known her all her life, so after I’d checked to be sure she wasn’t in labor, I didn’t mind saying, “I wanted to ask about one of your employees—Valerie something or other, who lives out with Edie Burkett.”

  “Valerie Allen. Is she in trouble with the law?”

  “Not that I know of. But Edie’s been having a few things happening out there that make her think she’s getting forgetful, and I wondered if Valerie could be playing practical jokes or something.”

  Meriwether was highly amused. “Not likely. Valerie is real sweet and conscientious, and I think she and Edie get along real well. Besides, Valerie’s the flakiest person I ever knew. She wouldn’t know a practical joke if she met one.”

  After I hung up, I repeated what Meriwether had said. Olive asked, “She didn’t mention Valerie’s new boyfriend? She’s started hanging out with a biker who has tattoos all over him and plays in a hard-rock band. Heaven only knows what kind of trouble he’s been in.”

  That was a kind of trouble Alex understood. Her forehead furrowed. “Edie didn’t tell me that. She just said Valerie has a friend from school who comes over and fixes things.”

  Olive sighed. “Edie sees what Edie wants to see. Frank is helpful, so Frank is fine. To hear Edie talk, you’d think he was Saint Peter himself. What I see is a man who looks like a Hell’s Angel hanging around my best friend’s house. And now Valerie has started playing keyboard and singing with the band, which means they go out almost every night to practice or play.”

  Alex leaned against her desk and gave Olive a thoughtful look. “Do you think Valerie may be getting in with somebody who could endanger Edie?”

  Olive hesitated, then nodded. “What’s to keep Valerie from letting him in at night? Edie goes to bed early. Maybe Valerie forgot to lock the door after he left last week. She could be letting him use Edie’s car, too. Edie sleeps soundly. She might not hear it driving out. The two of them could use it to deliver drugs, or they could rob Edie blind before she knew a thing was happening.”

  Alex turned to me. “What do you think, Mac?”

  I thought it was time for some common sense. “Ask Isaac to check the man out. If he has a criminal record, Edie ought to be informed. If he doesn’t, I’d wait and see if there are any more developments.” I nodded toward Alex’s window. “And speaking of developments, while I’ve been in here, clouds have been rolling back in. By now, it looks like the sky angel has had a serious accident involving bleach. I need to run if I don’t want to get soaked walking back.”

  Alex looked, then sighed. “Lordy, I hope it won’t rain again. Edie will have kittens. She said they need sunshine and wind to dry things up fast, so they can get back to harvesting.” She took my elbow to see me out, and murmured so Olive couldn’t hear, “Thanks for coming. I was scared Edie might be getting—you know. You’ve put things in perspective. Isaac was right. You are good at solving mysteries.”

  “I think it’s just stress,” I assured her. “If she cuts back, she ought to be fine.”

  Oh, Edie, how could I have been so wrong?

  4

  That afternoon I held traffic court in the west end of the county then returned to town via Whelan Grove Road. The new superstore had been built where Whelan Grove Road dead-ends into Oglethorpe Street, and I wanted to see if our business owners’ association prayers had been answered and that dratted superstore lay in a smoking ruin.

  I know those weren’t charitable thoughts, but I still couldn’t believe how eagerly our county commissioners had bought the corporation’s claim that the new store would stimulate our economy by creating jobs. Most of the jobs it created would pay minimum wage, and all the profits would slide out of town into the pockets of distant corporate officers and stockholders. Meanwhile, folks like us, who owned or managed businesses and had invested our lives, our money, and sizeable civic and charitable contributions in Hopemore, would watch our livelihoods dry up and die. I felt like a Roman watching Goths and Vandals climb over the wall.

  The weather deteriorated along with my mood. Mist had settled low on the shoulders of the sky, blurring the line where treetops met the clouds. I kept needing my wipers, but they just made a streaky mess of the windshield.

  About the time I reached Whelan Grove, the mist turned to drizzle. For those who know pecans only as sweet halves in tins or bags, a rainy grove in November is lovely. Pecans keep their leaves until the first frost, and soft evergreen grass is planted between the rows. The road split Josiah’s thousand acres, so on both sides, mammoth trees planted sixty feet apart marched in perfect rows, both straight and diagonal, as far as my eye could see. An Impressionist artist would probably love that swirling mist, the grassy vistas, and all those shades of gray and green.

  But to those of us who know pecans, a grove in an autumn rain is a heartbreaking sight. One of the reasons Georgia grows more pecans than anywhere else in the world is because our autumns are mild and dry. The occasional rain that falls during harvest season is usually followed by a drying wind, so that in a day or two harvesting can proceed.

  This season had been unusually wet, with two weeks of soaking rain. No matter how beautiful the grove looked in the mist, its beauty didn’t make up for what I ought to be seeing.

  Somewhere in that grove, mowers ought to be cutting the grass short between the trees. Where the mowers had finished, a mechanical shaker should have been grasping trees and shaking them gently, testing whether each variety was ripe enough to harvest. Where trees had been deemed ripe, another shaker should have been zipping along at a mind-boggling rate, grabbing and shaking a new tree every two minutes in a shower of nuts.

  I loved watching those shakers, because clever little blowers on each wheel sent out a spurt of nuts whether they went forwards or backwards, saving every nut from being smashed. Two days behind the shakers, sweepers should have been moseying down the grassy medians “busting the middle”—clearing the middle of each row so limbs could be piled there, and brushing nuts that fell beneath the drip line back toward the trees. Crewmen should have been walking along behind of the sweepers, tossing fallen limbs and branches onto the grass, out of the way. Where that crew had been, more sweepers should have been moving up and down each row near the trunks, sweeping nuts into neat windrows on each side.

  Behind the sweepers, I should be seeing Josiah’s two green tractors pulling harvesters, which he fondly called “my eighty-thousand-dollar Hoovers.” They vacuumed up the nuts and conveyed them by chain into the dump wagon pulled along behind. Through the dust the harvesters blew out, I should be seeing big peanut wagons, large enough to hold three dump wagon loads of nuts, moving to convenient stations around the grove to receive nuts from the dump wagons.

  Harvesting is dusty work. Now that developers were building close to groves, in some areas the harvesters traveled in one direction only, to avoid smothering somebody’s party in dust.

  It is urgent to harvest before most of the machinery-clogging leaves start to fall, so at this time of year Josiah’s grove ought to have been alive with clouds of dust and workers’ shouts punctuating the mechanical din.

  Instead, the grove stood silent and still. Pecans can’t be harvested with wet leaves on the ground. A
day of hard rain stops work for two or three days. Heaven only knew what two weeks of rain had done. Poor Edie. Poor Henry.

  I didn’t plan on turning in Edie’s drive. It was past five, and the day had that smudged look it wears at dusk toward the end of autumn, when the year is tired and winding down. Joe Riddley was expecting me back so we could go eat the seafood buffet at the country club. But all of a sudden, as Whelans’ drive was coming up on my left, I heard the honk of Canada geese. We don’t see many geese in Hope County, and all my life I’ve stopped whatever I was doing to watch them fly over. I didn’t like to stop on the road, so I pulled into the drive and rolled down my window. I ignored the drizzle blowing onto my face as I peered up at the sky. In less than a minute, a V of perhaps fifteen geese wheeled right over me, making for the pond down at the back of the grove. I watched until they disappeared.

  The edges of the drive looked too muddy for turning, so I decided to go around the circular drive at the side of the house. Edie was probably in Augusta with Josiah, anyway.

  The house, set in the middle of the grove far down the gravel drive, appeared to sit in an enormous, shady lawn. Big, square, and plain, with a two-story columned porch, it had one quirky feature: the room Josiah had built when Edie was a teenager and wanted to sleep at the top of the house. For his only daughter, he had literally raised the roof—slicing off the top, installing three walls of windows four feet high, then setting the rooftop back down on the glass walls like a party hat. As I drove down the quarter mile of gravel that afternoon, I wondered if Edie still slept up there now that she was mistress of the whole place.

  When I was small, I used to go to Whelans’ with Daddy every fall to buy pecans, back when Josiah’s daddy was a cotton farmer with a few pecan trees growing in damp bottomland. Josiah and his older brother, Edward, were young bachelors then. Edward, handsome and charming, had a new English degree from Emory and (so Mama said) preferred writing stories to plowing fields. Josiah—shorter, dumpy, and plain—was my favorite, because he’d tease me and chase me, shrieking with laughter, around the yard.