Who Killed the Queen of Clubs?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  Clarinda met me. “He’s still not home.” The front door opened directly into the living room, which was paneled in dark walnut and decorated in green and cream with touches of red. I wished it didn’t remind me so much of a funeral parlor.

  Daisy sat uneasily in a green brocade armchair, twisting a tissue in her hands until it was worn to shreds. Nothing about her was still. Her gaze darted from me to her lap, roamed around the room, then made another round-trip. Her knees quivered in their brown corduroy pants. Her feet tapped the creamy carpet. Her lips trembled.

  “Have you talked to the sheriff? Did he tell you why his men are so dadgum sure they can arrest Henry?” Clarinda demanded, lowering herself with an “oof!” onto one end of the couch as I sat down on the other, nearest Daisy.

  I hesitated, but it wouldn’t be a secret as soon as the crime lab sent back a report, and those deputies had no business scaring Daisy with tones of voice and facial expressions. I’d watched them do it to other suspects’ families, and it made me mad.

  “They found a pair of his coveralls down behind some bushes near the equipment barn. They’ve sent them off to be tested to see if somebody else could have worn them.”

  “O’ course somebody else wore ’em if they were worn to kill Miss Edie in!” Clarinda’s loyalty to her family runs strong and deep. “Henry never killed anybody, and if he did, he’s too smart to leave his own coveralls under a bush for any half-wit deputy to find.”

  “He went missing a pair not long ago,” Daisy offered eagerly. “I don’t mind what day it was, but he’d put them on fresh the day before, and he usually wears them two days if he don’t get them real dirty, to save me having so much wash. But he showed up here the next morning saying he thought he’d left them on a hook in his shed, but he must not have, because they wasn’t there. I told him, ‘I can’t have you losing clothes like you used to in grade school.’ That boy was so careless with clothes back then, the principal said he was gonna change the sign on the LOST AND FOUND box and just call it HENRY’S BOX. And in fourth grade—” She seemed eager to escape into Henry’s childhood, but it was Henry’s present I was worried about.

  “You need to think back to what day that was,” I told her. “Remember anything you did that day to fix it in your mind, and write it down so you’ll remember.”

  “In case you have to testify in court.” Clarinda has worked for judges too long.

  Daisy gasped and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t. I just can’t!”

  “It hasn’t come to that yet,” I reminded her. “Tell me what happened today.”

  While we waited for her to collect her thoughts, I wondered if she’d tell me much. It wasn’t as if we were friends. Pete used to come in and out of the store a lot, but his wife seldom left home. I’d heard she had whatever that disease is that makes people afraid to go into crowds. The three of us weren’t much of a crowd, but as she looked quickly at me, Clarinda, and back at her lap, I felt sure she thought her house had one too many people in it.

  “Clarinda said Henry stormed out of here this afternoon.” I prompted her when the silence grew long.

  She nodded. “It’s that paper. That wicked paper.” Her frightened whisper was worthy of a horror film. I shivered, although the house was too warm and stuffy.

  For a minute or two, the only sound in the room was the soft hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Daisy didn’t seem to hear it. I don’t know when I’d seen a woman look so wrung out. “Tell me about Henry,” I prodded.

  Before Daisy could answer, Clarinda jumped in. “He came home midafternoon for a little break. Daisy and I were sitting here having a glass of tea, so I fixed him some. He asked what we’d been doing all day, and Daisy told him two of the sheriff’s men had asked her to clean up Miss Edie’s room. That made him mad to start with.”

  “It was awful,” Daisy put in. “Plumb awful.” She shuddered at the memory.

  “Then Daisy said the same men had come down here asking again about the night Miss Edie died, and she mentioned to Henry that she’d had to tell them about taking her medicine for a migraine and going to bed early, so she couldn’t exactly swear he was here that night.”

  “But I’m pretty sure he was,” Daisy added anxiously.

  Clarinda nodded, and continued. “Henry started fussing at her, saying he had nothing to do with that murder and she knows it, but she’s the only alibi he’s got. Then Daisy says she knows what’s killed everybody, it’s that paper from his grandmama’s Bible. She says everybody who touches that paper goes crazy and dies. He asks, ‘What paper?’ and she fetches it to him. Next thing we know, he’s running out of here like a wild man—”

  I’d heard that bit, so I waved her to stop. “Do you know what made him so mad?”

  Daisy lifted her head. “It was that paper. That wicked paper!”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She clutched the arms of her chair like it might lift off with her any minute. “I don’t know, but I wish I’d burnt it up. Why didn’t I when I had a chance? I found it in Pete’s mama’s Bible one Friday when I was dusting. I pulled out the Bible and that paper fell out. I saw Pete’s name on it, so I showed it to him when he got home from work. He collapsed on that couch right where you are now, like a strong wind had blown him over. Then he got up and started pacing. He paced up and down all night long, muttering things I couldn’t hear. When I got up to get breakfast, he was sitting at the table with his head in his hands. All of a sudden he jumped up and said, ‘I’ve got to talk to Josiah. I’ll be back in a little while.’

  “I told him, ‘It’s Saturday. You don’t work Saturdays until harvest time, and we were goin’ to town.’ He said, ‘I’m fixin’ to get me an explanation. I’ll be back in a bit, and we’ll go to town.’ ”

  She slumped in her chair. “The next time I saw him, he was dead, and Mr. Josiah might as well have been. The paper was still in Pete’s pocket, but it was crumpled up, like he’d taken it out and put it back in a hurry, and it had a little corner missing. It killed him, Judge. I know that as sure as I’m sittin’ here. And when Henry saw it this afternoon”—she emphasized the first half of the word, as country people are wont to do—“it was like Pete all over again. He started talking wild, said he wanted an explanation, and tore out of here like the devil himself was on his tail.”

  “But you don’t know what was on the paper?”

  “No’m.” Lacking another tissue to shred, she twisted the corduroy over her thin knees and did not meet my eyes.

  “Daisy, can you read?” I asked as gently as I knew how.

  She hesitated, then shook her head, her head still down. “It shames me,” she mumbled, “and I was so afraid Miss Edie would find out, her carin’ so much about reading and such. I never learned much past my name.”

  “Why not?” I knew the story I would hear. I’ve heard it so many times in one form or another from her generation. Anyone who doesn’t believe we have nonreading adults in this country needs to think again. And these are not dumb people. The rest of us ought to try for a week to cook a new prepackaged food, operate anything from a radio to a microwave, or take new medicine on schedule without being able to read. It takes a good bit of intelligence and native wisdom to survive, much less survive without being found out.

  Daisy’s voice dropped to a whisper, and I had to strain to hear. “Mama died when I was in first grade, and I went to live with an auntie. She had littler children, and she needed me to mind them so she could work and feed us all. When I got bigger, I kept meaning to go back, but I was working and needed the money. Then I married Pete. He tried to teach me some, but he wasn’t a real patient man, and the more he tried to teach me, the more nervous I’d get. I thought about axin’ Miss Edie, but I was too ashamed.” She paused, and the room was silent for a long minute. Then she lifted her head. “The only two words I knew on that paper were ‘Peter Joyner.’ That’s why I showed it to Pete.” She jumped up and began wringing her hands. “It killed hi
m, Judge, and it killed Miss Edie. Now it will kill my Henry, too!” She flung herself around the room, muttering and rubbing her hands like Lady Macbeth.

  As she circled close to me, I realized what she had just said. “Did you show the paper to Edie?” I asked gently.

  She veered over toward the window and stood there clutching the drape, as silent as if she had not heard.

  “Did you?” Clarinda wasn’t gentle at all. “Did you bother Miss Edie with that?”

  I raised one hand in protest, but Clarinda’s roughness made Daisy protest, with misery in every line of her body. “I didn’t mean to harm her. I’d never have harmed Miss Edie. You all know that.”

  “But you showed it to her?” I pressed her.

  I could barely see her nod. “Yessum. I stuck it back in Mary’s Bible after I took it from Pete, and I forgot all about it. But I picked up that Bible last Sunday a week, because I needed comfort. Sometimes just holdin’ the Good Book brings comfort, you know?” She covered her face before I could nod. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna comfort me if that paper takes Henry, like it did my Pete and Miss Edie.” She fell into a nearby chair, flopped her head against its back, and filled the room with her wails.

  I walked over to the window and looked out, partly to reassure myself that a sunny, sane world still existed. When she stopped for breath, I prodded her. “So you found it again Sunday afternoon.”

  She jumped up and started circling the room again. She followed a worn dip in the carpet, which I figured was her regular route when agitated. “The Bible opened right to it, like a sign or something. Sign of evil is what it was! All these years since Mary died, I left that Bible sitting right there on that shelf. Why I had to pull it out this fall, I do not know. It has brought me nothing but trouble. When I saw the paper that killed Pete, seemed like I just had to know what it was. So I carried it up to the grove, looking for Henry. He works Sunday afternoons during harvest. When I got to the house, Miss Edie was gettin’ out of her car, comin’ back from church, so I told her I’d found a paper with Pete’s name on it in Mary’s Bible. I didn’t tell her Pete had it first. I said my migraine was so bad, I couldn’t see to read it, so could she read it and tell me what it said. She—” Daisy turned her back to us and stopped. Her voice faltered.

  “Go on,” Clarinda ordered.

  Daisy took a deep breath, put her palms together, and lifted them in front of her mouth. I had to listen carefully to hear her. “She looked at it a minute, then she got real pale. Maybe there’s poison in that paper, I don’t know. I never come over queer holding it, but everybody else sure has. I was afraid she would faint, she was so white. I helped her real quick into the house and got her some water. She sat there just looking at the paper for a long, long time. Finally I reached to take it back, figuring I’d put it back in the Bible where it couldn’t do more harm. ‘I’m sorry to bother you with this,’ I told her. ‘I was coming looking for Henry.’ She pulled the paper away from me and axt, ‘Henry hasn’t seen this?’ I said, ‘No’m, I haven’t showed it to him yet,’ and she said, ‘Don’t bother him with it right now. Let me keep it a few days. I’ll see what I can do. And I’ll bring it back. I promise.’ She worried me, her voice was so faint.

  “ ‘Is it bad?’ I asked. And she said, ‘Very bad. Shameful.’ She rubbed her head like it was aching, then she said, ‘I need to think. You go on home now. I’ll bring you back your paper in a day or two.’ She did, too. She come down here Tuesday around dinnertime and told me she’d taken care of things, that I should put the paper back in the Bible and not say anything about it to Henry until she could talk to him.” Daisy stopped pacing and lifted her hands to the ceiling. “May God forgive me, that’s the last time I ever saw her. That paper I give her killed her just like it did my Pete. If it takes Henry—You gotta find him, Miss Mac. You just gotta. I can’t lose Henry along with everybody else!”

  21

  “I need to think, too,” I told Daisy. “I’ll call you later.” I turned to Clarinda. “You’ll be staying down here?”

  She pursed her lips, disgusted I hadn’t come up with a magic answer to Daisy’s dilemma right away. “I’m not goin’ anywhere until we sort this out. But you think fast, and find out what’s going on before they arrest Henry. We don’t want any more trouble around this place. Besides, I got to cook all day tomorrow for my sorority luncheon Wednesday.”

  “That’s right.” I reached for my pocketbook. “Keep your priorities straight.”

  I did want to know what was going on, though. Whelan Grove had had enough tragedies. I didn’t want Henry to be another.

  “There has to be something we’ve all missed,” I muttered as I drove back to the store in Hopemore’s afternoon rush minute. It was more prayer than complaint. “But what?”

  The amazing thing about prayer is that sometimes when we think we’re simply asking for what we want, we’re actually being led to ask so we’ll recognize an answer when it comes. That afternoon, the words were hardly out of my mouth when a siren wailed behind me. As I swung off the highway to let a paramedic van pass on its frantic way to the emergency room, I thought about the day Josiah and Pete were rushed to the hospital. Pete was already dead and Josiah unable to speak. So who called 911?

  Before I could mull that over, as if my life weren’t complicated enough, my cell phone rang. “Judge?” the sheriff asked. “Are you near your office? I need a warrant for arrest.”

  “Shep actually charged her? Let me come down there. It’s on my way back.”

  I arrived to find a very shamefaced Genna slumped sullenly before the magistrate’s bench. Her clothes were wrinkled, her hair disheveled, her face streaked with mascara. As soon as she saw me, she immediately started talking. “It was all a mistake, Mac. I wouldn’t have hurt anybody. I just wanted him to tell me about Edie’s money, and he wouldn’t.”

  Shep Faxon stood angrily to one side.

  I held up one hand. “Wait a minute, Genna. Shep, you sure you want the sheriff to charge Genna here with aggravated assault?”

  “I sho’ do, Judge. The way she was wavin’ that gun around, she coulda killt somebody!” I kept my dignity, but something in me wanted to stand and cheer for anybody who could so thoroughly ruffle his feathers.

  I signed the paper the sheriff handed me, then before I set bond, I ascertained several things. Adney was working a circuit down toward Jacksonville for the next two days, and Genna had decided to go ask some questions about Edie’s will before he got home. She had a permit to carry the gun because she was nervous when Adney was away. She had never used it before. The sheriff now had the gun in his possession. Genna was not likely to pose a threat to the community if I released her until her court date. And she didn’t have enough money in her checking account to post bond.

  I saw what Cindy meant about Genna being useless without Adney. She couldn’t think of a single way to get out of jail until she called him on her cell phone. I was surprised she’d had the gumption to go see Shep without him. Adney said he’d call Olive. She came waltzing into the detention center half an hour later so indignant, you’d have thought we’d all been pistol-whipping Genna for hours. She thumped down the deed to some land Adney owned like we were planning to use it for nefarious and probably illegal purposes, and swept Genna off saying, as they went out the door, “Let’s go get you freshened up, and we’ll have dinner at the country club. You look like you could use a drink.” From the glares they both shot back at me as they headed for Olive’s car, I wouldn’t be selling plants to either of them anytime soon.

  The sheriff grinned at Shep and me. “All in a day’s work, right?”

  Shep Faxon wiped his forehead, which had beaded with sweat during the process. “Not in my day’s work. I don’t mind tellin’ you, when that girlie jerked out that pistol and started wavin’ it around, I thought my time had come. I didn’t think she’d shoot me on purpose, mind—”

  “She doesn’t know you well enough,” I retorted. “You can leave that to
your friends.”

  I left them to whatever it is men talk about when they huddle together in hallways, and moseyed down to the 911 operator’s desk.

  Hope County was later than some in getting a 911 system because we’re underpopulated, as Georgia counties go. Opponents pointed out that we don’t have constant emergencies like crowded counties, which keep whole banks of operators busy twenty-four hours a day. They objected to paying for twenty-four-hour service when some days we don’t get a single emergency call and some of the calls that do come in—about minor fender benders or women wanting a ride to the hospital when they’re in labor and their husbands are at work with the truck—aren’t “real” emergencies.

  Proponents argued that those are real emergencies when they are happening to you, and in addition, we get a number of domestic violence calls and have a lot of fires in winter, because our weather is mild enough that some houses still aren’t well heated and folks rely too much on space heaters, then leave them unattended. They also argued that because of television, folks in Hope County knew that other people could dial 911 in any emergency and get help without having to look up and dial a whole number for the hospital, the sheriff, or the fire department.

  I hate to admit it, but the argument that swayed the vote was that we didn’t want newcomers thinking they’d moved to a hick town.

  The county commission compromised by installing a 911 line at one of the desks in the sheriff’s office and making sure that whoever is on that desk gives those calls priority. Otherwise, he or she is free to work on other tasks.

  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.