Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  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.

  Our office has the standard modern technology needed to run a business these days, but the beaded board walls, wide unfinished floorboards, and oak rolltop desks are exactly like they were in Joe Riddley’s grandparents’ day. We’ve kept them that way because we like them, and that old office is a mighty comforting place to be. It’s seen a lot of grief in the fourteen decades Yarbroughs have worked there. When I get upset, it invariably reminds me that life does go on.

  After a while Joe Riddley said, “Lord, we don’t understand this, but we ask you to receive Edie into your presence.”

  I swallowed tears. “And help us catch whoever did it.”

  “Help the officers of the law catch whoever did it,” Joe Riddley amended my prayer, “and give Little Bit here sense enough to stay out of the whole mess.”

  “You aren’t supposed to pray that way.” I grabbed another tissue and blew my nose.

  “Been praying that way for years. God would think it odd if I stopped now.” He stood and reached for his cap. “I was on my way over here in the first place to tell you we got the landscape contract for that new subdivision going up over in Burke County.”

  “That’s wonderful, honey.” I reached for another tissue and blew my nose. To tell the truth, I didn’t feel at all wonderful, although that job would pay a lot of bills.

  He sighed and echoed my thoughts. “It was wonderful news back when I heard it. Doesn’t seem to matter much right now.” He put his cap back on his head and looked downright morose.

  I caught his hand to keep him from leaving quite yet. “Why are the police dealing with this instead of the sheriff?”

  “Sheriff Gibbons and all his deputies are working a crash up this side of I-20—the other end of Whelan Grove Road, in fact. Two tractor trailers collided, and three other cars were involved, with fatalities.”

  He paused to give me time to absorb this further tragedy. Whenever I hear of something like that, I am astonished that such a dreadful thing could happen without the rest of us feeling at least a tremor in the air.

  “They should have widened that road years ago.” I sniffed. “It gets far too much traffic.”

  “Too many accidents, too. Officer James said this one has blocked both lanes and will take a while to sort out. That’s why the 911 operator routed the call to Chief Muggins.”

  “Did Officer James say if they have any idea who killed Edie?”

  “No, but he did say they found the weapon in her bathroom. A machete, apparently.”

  I clutched my throat. “Machete?” My teeth started playing a lively tune. A joke ran through my mind: “Why did the Siberian buy a refrigerator? So he could keep warm in the winter.” Why did a Hopemore magistrate think of jokes when her friend had been hacked to death? Because she couldn’t bear to think about who used machetes.

  “Henry—” I could hardly get the word out. “He makes machetes.”

  Joe Riddley crumpled back into his chair like the straw man of Oz with the stuffing knocked out of him. “Don’t speak out of turn, Little Bit. Lots of people use machetes. Maybe one of Edie’s migrant workers broke in to rob her, not knowing she was in the house.”

  “Henry was making a machete when I was there.”

  “Lots of folks use machetes,” he repeated stubbornly.

  We might have gone around in that circle longer, but he leaned toward me and said angrily, “You stay out of this, you hear me? Whoever did this is somebody you don’t need to be aggravating.”

  “Don’t you point your finger at me, Joe Riddley Yarbrough.”

  “I’ll hook it in your collar and hang you on that hook over there if you take one step toward getting involved in this.”

  “I ought to at least tell Isaac I saw Henry making a machete.”

  “You don’t need to tell Isaac a bloomin’ thing, you hear me?”

  I drifted off into thinking that anybody who knew us would realize how upset we were, because we were calling the assistant police chief “Isaac.” When Joe Riddley was first appointed magistrate, over thirty years before, he’d decided we would give law enforcement officers the respect of their titles outside our home, no matter how well we knew them. He even called Buster “Sheriff Gibbons,” although they’d been best friends since kindergarten.

  I came out of that thought just as he was saying, “. . . help Isaac needs from you is to go tell Alex. He said he’s not up to that right now and asked if you’d do it. I said you’d be glad to.”

  I winced at his choice of words. “I will not be glad to. Why me?”

  “Because he’s busy. Besides you know Alex, you knew Edie, and Officer James thinks it would come easier from you than from a stranger.” He checked his watch. “You need to get going, too.”

  I sniffed and reached for another tissue. “Somebody ought to tell Josiah, too.”

  “I told him I’d do that.” The way he was cupping his chin in one hand, rubbing one cheek with his fingers, he dreaded the job. I felt a stab of anger at Isaac for putting that on him. Still, nobody could do it better.

  “You reckon he’ll have any notion what you’re saying?”

  Joe Riddley slammed his fist on my desk. “How the Sam Hill do I know? But I said I’d do it, and I will, just like you’ll go tell Alex. It’s the least we can do.”

  He almost never roars at me, so I didn’t take offense. He wasn’t mad at me. I wanted to pound something, too. Or balance on a roof ridge somewhere and howl like a dog. We’d had a number of murders lately, and each one of them had been dreadful, but for a woman to be hacked to death in her own home—

  “Things like this shouldn’t happen in Hopemore,” I muttered.

  “Things like this shouldn’t happen, period.” Joe Riddley jerked open the door. “I’m off to see Josiah.”

  “Honey?” I called him back. “If you’ll come help tell Alex, I’ll go with you to Josiah.”

  He considered, then gave a short nod. “I’d be glad of your company. But let’s get going. We don’t want Alex hearing this from somebody else.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I muttered as I reached for my pocketbook. “I’ll give half my estate to anybody who steps up and volunteers to tell her.”

  12

  Alex and Natasha lived in a second-floor apartment in a new brick complex with white trim, black shutters, and brass door knockers on shiny black front doors. Yarbrough’s had provided the landscaping. As we pulled into a vacant parking place, as upset as I was, I couldn’t help thinking that the plants and grounds still looked real nice.

  “You want to go in by yourself?” Joe Riddley suggested, his voice hopeful. “She might prefer to hear it from you alone.”

  “You just don’t want to see a woman cry. Come on. I need your support.”

  Even without makeup, Alex was stunning in a floor-length black silk robe and gold wedge slippers that showed off dark red toenails, but when she saw us, she rubbed one hand over her face like she hoped lipstick and mascara would magically appear. I could tell she wondered why we were there so early.

  “Can we come in?” I asked. She stepped back to let us enter. “Your place is beautiful,” I told her, astonished that she managed to keep a white velvet couch and chair so clean with a four-year-old in the house. She must vacuum pretty often, too, to keep that dark blue carpet free of lint. And don’t tell me I shouldn’t have been thinking of carpets and couches at such a time. You do the best you can.

  She waved us toward the couch, apologizing that the mahogany dining table at the other side of the room was buried in files. “I’ve been working on another grant proposal,” she told us. “Edie does them faster, but I can’t keep asking her to do them in her spare time.” She sat down in a chair across from us and smoothed the robe over her knees. “I may hire somebody else to replace her at the desk and let her spend more time raising money. She’s got the knack.�
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  “Ummm.” I hadn’t said a word and still felt like a liar.

  Alex clasped her hands before her. Her nails this week were Christmas red with silver balls. “So, what brings you out so early in the morning? You want a cup of tea?”

  “No, thank you.” I felt tears starting up again. “Edie’s dead, Alex.” My voice stopped.

  Alex started wheezing. She jumped up and dashed from the room. In a couple of seconds she was back with an inhaler. “Asthma,” she gasped. “I’ll be all right.”

  After a few more deep breaths she said in an unsteady voice, “I was scared of something like that. You knew Valerie moved out?” She didn’t wait for my nod. “I hated the idea of her down there all by herself. Just hated it. But—” She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer.

  I handed her a tissue and cried into another. Joe Riddley shifted uneasily in his seat.

  Alex sniffed and swallowed. “How did she do it, do you know?”

  I was too startled to answer. It was Joe Riddley who leaned forward and said, “She didn’t.” He added, as gently as you can say those three brutal words, “She was murdered.”

  Alex flung up her head and her mouth flew open. I had not known until that moment that a black person can turn pale. “What you say? Murdered? She didn’t kill herself?” She read the answer in our faces. “What happened? How’d you find out?”

  I ran to fetch her a glass of water, leaving Joe Riddley to answer. “I saw Isaac on the highway, coming from her place. He asked if we’d come tell you.”

  “Isaac sent you here?” She gave a little grunt of disgust. “Can’t blame him, I guess. Last time he brought me this kind of news, after Mama got herself shot and killed, I hauled off and hit him. But with Edie, you’d think he’d have the decency—”

  The doorbell rang.

  She strode to the door and flung it open, probably expecting her cousin. From the kitchen I saw it was Donna Linse, her small face bloodless in the hood of a bright purple parka.

  “Edie’s been hacked to pieces!” She clutched her thin chest like she was holding herself together to prevent a similar fate. “Somebody broke into her house and cut her to bits!”

  Joe Riddley spoke up quickly. “Hold up, Donna. That’s not what Officer James told me. He said she was possibly killed by one blow of a machete, but he didn’t say a word about hacked to bits. Let’s don’t go spreading stories like that.”

  All his life he’s had the gift of calming frantic people. Donna relaxed a little and stepped inside, but Alex clutched her throat, her eyes wide with horror. “A machete?”

  “That’s what Isaac said,” Joe Riddley confirmed. “They found one that may be the murder weapon, but they don’t know yet.”

  Alex grabbed Donna’s shoulder and shoved her into the chair she’d vacated. “Here. Sit down.” She came toward me, and dragged over the armchair from the dining room. Planting it beside Donna, she sat down and ordered, “Catch your breath, then tell us what you heard.”

  The chair wobbled beneath her, so while Donna recovered a little, Alex brought it back and grabbed another, muttering to me, “I gotta get that thing fixed before it falls down with somebody. Now, Donna, what do you know?” She sat heavily in her chair.

  Donna’s voice shook. “I went to the Bi-Lo for a few groceries and ran into the wife of a deputy. He was the one who answered the 911 call after Mac—” She looked up and saw me for the first time. “You tell them! Edie was hacked to pieces, and there was blood everywhere!” She collapsed in a storm of weeping.

  Alex whirled to me. “You found her? Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was terrible.

  I licked my lips. “I was working up to it.” I was also avoiding Joe Riddley’s eye.

  “Working up to it? You find my best friend hacked to death, and you were working up to tell me?” She leaped to her feet and prowled like a panther. “I told you! I told you something was going on down there. I told you and Isaac both, and nobody did diddly-squat about it.”

  “Edie didn’t believe—”

  “You don’t see somebody heading for a cliff, Mac, and do nothing to help them because they don’t believe the cliff is there.” Betrayal was in her voice and the set of her mouth.

  Joe Riddley held up his hand again, to stall her. “No call to shout at MacLaren here.”

  His quiet common sense pierced her anger, and grief flooded out. She dropped her face to her hands and sobbed huge sobs. Donna fetched her a wet washrag to wipe her face. Finally she blubbered, “Go on home, Mac. We’ll talk later. Let me know if you find out about arrangements.”

  I dreaded that walk to the car, but Joe Riddley didn’t say a word. He kept a hand on my shoulder, even opened the car door for me, which he doesn’t often do anymore. He lowered himself into his seat and sat there without turning the key.

  “You found her,” he finally said.

  I shut my eyes tight and nodded. I couldn’t speak.

  “You saw her like that?”

  I took a deep breath to try and control the tears, but the arctic cold had come into my bones again. When I nodded, I started to shiver and shake.

  He reached behind him and got a blanket we always carry. It was awkward to unfold it behind the wheel, but he managed, and he wrapped it around my shoulders. Then he leaned over and held me like he used to when we were courting teenagers. “Oh, Little Bit, Little Bit.”

  I cried my heart out on his shoulder, surrounded by sixty years of love.

  He handed me a box of tissues from the backseat. “You should have told me.”

  “I just went to take her the cake. The back door was open—” I couldn’t go on.

  “You still want to ride to Augusta?”

  “A bargain is a bargain.”

  He reached out and touched my cheek. “There’s nowhere I’d rather have you right now.”

  “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

  We drove the long way around to avoid the accident near I-20, which meant following several timber trucks on two-lane roads. Joe Riddley’s not a speedy driver even on empty roads, so by the time we pulled into the Golden Years parking lot, it was well past eleven.

  A stocky brunette shoved a visitor’s book our way with a pen. I noticed that Joe Riddley signed in without asking for the room number and headed for hall C. “Have you been to see him before?” I asked, trotting to keep up with his long legs.

  “A time or two,” he acknowledged, “when I happened to be up this way.”

  To have done a good deed and never mentioned it was typical of my husband.

  When we got to the room, though, I thought Joe Riddley had made a mistake. Josiah Whelan was stout, with thick hair that sandy color that slides into gray. The bed was occupied by a shrunken old man with lifeless white hair and a face that had fallen in on itself. Then I saw his eyes—Edie’s eyes, which made something extraordinary out of ordinary faces. I also saw a plastic container beside his bed holding false teeth.

  He lifted his right hand from the covers in greeting, but I couldn’t tell if he recognized us or was simply glad to see anybody at all.

  Joe Riddley went over and clasped his good right hand. “Hey, buddy.”

  Josiah squeezed his hand and grimaced in what I guessed was a smile.

  Joe Riddley squeezed back. “MacLaren came to see you, too.”

  I went to the other side of the bed and took his left hand. It was whispery and dry, a dead weight in mine. A believable smile was more than I could manage, so I bent and gave him a kiss on his forehead.

  “Watch it, Josiah,” Joe Riddley warned. “Don’t you mess with my wife, you hear me?”

  Josiah opened his mouth and made some noises accompanied by a vigorous nodding of his head. I couldn’t make out a single word in the sounds, but thought he was laughing. Josiah always liked a good laugh.

  “Well, lookee who’s got comp’ny,” said a cheerful voice behind us. “You all sit down and visit a spell.” A large nurse in an aqua smock and white pants went
to open the blinds so the sun warmed the room. Her short, untidy hair was an improbable blond, and her lipstick blurred around the edges of her thick mouth, but her touch was kind as she rested a hand on Josiah’s pillow. “You all have a good visit now.” She bustled out.

  Josiah still clung to Joe Riddley’s hand like it was the edge of a life raft. With his other hand, Joe Riddley pulled up a chair close to the bed. I sat in a straight chair down at the bottom, where Josiah could see me if he cared to look.

  The room was peaceful. Edie had tried to make it homey by putting pictures on the wall, including one of the Whelan homeplace and pecan grove. A Thanksgiving cactus spilled fuchsia blooms down a brass pot on the tiled windowsill, and a pothos in a whimsical frog pot curled down from the top of a built-in wardrobe. Still, the room had that smell of urine and age that is so hard to conceal in a home where incontinent people live and windows are never opened.

  “Would you like some water?” Joe Riddley asked. When Josiah nodded, he gently steered a straw to the dry, cracked lips. When water dribbled down Josiah’s chin and onto his shirt, his lower lip quivered like he was about to cry.

  “Don’t drown him,” I said crossly, getting up to fetch a white towel from a small stand beside the bed. As I dabbed Josiah’s damp chest, I pure-T hated to see an old friend like that. I hated worse feeling like a hypocrite, acting cheerful when we’d come with awful news. He was so pathetically glad to see us. I knew now why Edie made that two-hour drive every day. Not just because she needed to see him, but because of how much he enjoyed having her come.

  I got up. “I want to see the nurse a minute.” I gave Joe Riddley a look that meant, “You tell him while I’m gone.” I never can tell how well he has read a look, but he nodded, so I hurried out. The aqua smock was disappearing into a room down the hall.

  I propped against the wall and waited for her to come out.

  “We aren’t here on a happy errand,” I informed her when she appeared. “Mr. Whelan’s daughter was killed last night, and the police asked us to let him know.”

  “Oh, no!” Her hand flew to cover her mouth. No manicures for Mary O’Connell—the name on her badge. Her nails were bare, her fingers beginning to curve with arthritis. “Was it a car wreck? When she didn’t come yesterday, we wondered what had happened. She was so faithful to come every day.”