When Will the Dead Lady Sing?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  I called Phyllis to make sure I could get my hair fixed at ten, then sat at my desk wondering how to find Hector when I couldn’t drive down to his place. Tad finished his game and turned. “I won. Why aren’t you working?”

  “I’m trying to figure out how to get Hector Blaine over here.”

  “Call and tell him to come. I mean, you’re a judge and everything.”

  I didn’t want to lower Tad’s opinion of judges. “He doesn’t have a phone.”

  “He must be plumb poor, then.” Was that sympathy I heard in his voice? Two nights in a barn with a homeless woman might have been good for the child, but I didn’t want him wasting newfound compassion on Hector.

  “Plumb no-count,” I answered bluntly. “He had a phone, but the company turned it off when they found out Hector had wired three other houses into his line and was charging them so he’d have money to buy liquor. Hector’s smart, but dishonest as they come. He’s probably hanging out down at Hardee’s right now, trying to wheedle breakfast out of some gullible tourist.”

  “Want me to go look?”

  “You are my pride and joy. If he’s there, tell him the Judge wants to see him today.”

  While Tad was gone, I decided to make my maiden voyage to the bathroom in the wheelchair. Thank goodness, Joe Riddley’s parents had made all the doors in the place wheelchair accessible years ago. They’d done it from compassion, not compulsion, but it turned out a blessing for themselves after J.R.’s accident.

  “You think you’re doing this for somebody else,” he’d told us the first day he wheeled himself in in his chair. “You never imagine you’re doing it for yourself. But accidents happen to anybody.”

  As I wheeled myself through our office door and back to the ladies’ room, I reflected that if builders remembered that, there wouldn’t be a narrow door in the world.

  Coming back, I smelled Hector before I saw him. The air outside my office reeked of stale clothes, an unwashed body, cheap wine, and chewing tobacco.

  He lounged in the wing chair, turning a filthy felt hat around and around in hands so grimy, I declined to shake. Tad perched unhappily on his grandfather’s desk chair. When he saw me, he turned so Hector couldn’t see him and screwed up his face in a yuck position.

  “Tad, why don’t you swap chairs with Mr. Blaine?” I suggested. “Pop’s chair is bigger, and Mr. Blaine would be more comfortable in it.” He’d also be less likely to leave permanent stains and odors on leather than on my new slip-cover. And being nearer the air-conditioning vent, Tad could resume breathing.

  I got myself into my own chair while they were making the change. Tad bent to help lift my cast onto its potting-soil cushion on top of the upturned bucket.

  “What happened to you?” Hector wiped a dribble from the corner of his mouth, and I saw a suspect lump in one cheek.

  “I sprained my ankle. You’d better not spit on my floor.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.” He pulled a can from his jacket pocket and spat in that. Then he jerked his head toward Tad. “That youngun said you wanted to see me.” He sounded surprised. Generally I tried to avoid him.

  “I do. Would you like a co-cola?”

  He narrowed his eyes and peered at me like he thought somebody had abducted the real Judge Yarbrough and left a nicer changeling in her place. “Reckon I do,” he finally allowed, “ ’Less’n you got somethin’ stronger.” He spat again.

  “Coke’s all I’ve got. Tad?”

  Tad stirred, but before he could start for the cup in Joe Riddley’s bottom drawer, I reached for my pocketbook and pulled out a dollar. “Go ask one of the clerks for change, and bring Mr. Blaine a Coke.” I didn’t want Hector knowing where we keep spare change. Between Joe Riddley going back and forth to the nursery and me popping down to the jail, our office is often empty.

  I wanted to be fair to Tad, so I didn’t ask any important questions before he got back. Instead I asked, “How are repairs coming along on your house?”

  A young lawyer in town, Jed DuBose, was underwriting the process of bringing the old Blaine place up to code in memory of Hector’s sister, Helena, who had raised him. The original plan was for Jed and Hector to work together evenings and weekends, but the last I saw Jed, he’d complained, “I’d like to see at least the roof finished in my lifetime, but it never will be at the rate Hector works.” I’d suggested that Jed spend what free time he had with his pregnant wife and use the money he made as a lawyer to pay other people to fix up the house. Joe Riddley and I have always believed one of the best things any of us can do with our money is hire other people who also need to earn.

  Hector huffed in disgust. “Jed’s got builder fellows crawling all over the place. I know he don’t have much spare time to put in, but I don’t like strangers on my pro pitty. I spend most of my time nowadays making sure they ain’t out back digging for the treasury. Besides, they keep expecting me to move my stuff so they can work. I like my stuff where it is.”

  I didn’t tell Hector it had been my idea to overrun his property with strangers. Instead, I sympathized with him over the problems builders caused just like I’d been harassed by them every day of my life. I also jotted “builder” on a scrap of paper, to remind me to call somebody about building us a new porch. It had occurred to me that instead of regretting our old one, we might as well add one to the new house, off the dining room.

  Hector droned on, an endless litany of complaints about life in general and bankers who wouldn’t lend him money using the Confederate treasury as collateral, in particular. When Tad returned, Hector took the Coke and drained about half of it in two long gulps. When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple jumped like it would leap from his throat.

  I asked, “Who was that you carried down to Spence’s place in your truck Sunday evening?”

  Tad had said “late afternoon,” but I knew Hector would consider anything after two “evening.” I also knew Hector would take his time answering, but Tad wasn’t experienced in dealing with him. “The lady,” he said impatiently after Hector had studied the writing on his drink bottle for well over a minute.

  Hector threw back his head and let out a guffaw. “That weren’t no lady, boy, that were Bertie. She was no more a lady than I am.” He laughed again.

  Tad was growing pink. Before he could chivalrously rush in to defend his friend, I said, “Did you know it was a woman?”

  “Of course. Me ’n’ her were like this.” He held two fingers up close together.

  “Do you know her full name?”

  Hector took time to spit again before he shook his head. “It never come up. She was just in town a few days before somebody whacked her upside the head. You know that—you found her.” I suppose that was to let me know he was well connected to the Hopemore grapevine.

  “Have you told the police what you know about her?” I asked.

  At the word “police,” he shifted in his seat and slid his eye toward the door to make sure his escape route was clear. “Don’t know nuthin’. Never laid eyes on her until Sattidy, when we met down at Myrtle’s. Had a bite to eat together, is all.”

  Tad’s eyes widened. “You eat at Myrtle’s?” I could tell the child was having trouble picturing Hector and his new friend in one of the booths, but it wasn’t the time or place to explain that they’d met around by the back door. Hubert didn’t need to frequent Myrtle’s back door, of course. Jed had arranged for almost every store in town to open Hector an account and send him the bills each month, but to get in the front door of Myrtle’s, Hector would have to wash and change his clothes. To his way of thinking, that would be a stiff price to pay for food he could get free out back.

  “You saw her again on Sunday.” I’d found that statements sometimes worked better than questions with Hector.

  He nodded. “Yeah, ran into her down at the Bi-Lo Dumpster. I told her I’d get us some eggs and bacon if she knew how to cook it. I got credit at Bi-Lo, you know.” He beamed at Tad and me as if he were a major stockholder i
n the grocery chain. “She was a right smart cook, as it turned out, but she warn’t too complimentary about my housekeeping. Made us eat out on the porch.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

  “Did she say where she was from?” I asked. “Or if she had any family?”

  “Never mentioned any family, and when I asked where she was from, she just said, ‘Here and there.’ ” He chuckled. “That’s exactly what she said, ‘Here and there, mostly there.’ Said she was just in town for a few days. She had kids, I think, though.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She kept mooning over that baby picture of Jed Helena hung on the wall.”

  “Did she say why she came to Hopemore?”

  “Nope. Just said she was passing through and stopping a few days. I told her she could bunk with me,” he added with a nasty leer, “but she said she had other accommodations. Mighty hifalutin word for Spence’s barn, if’n you ask me. Old Hubert ought to put him up a sign.” He sketched a sign with his hands and peered at me through it. “Spence’s Accommodations.”

  “Did you see her Monday?” I could see Tad was bursting to remind me he’d already told me she saw Hector Monday, but I gave him a warning frown and he subsided.

  Hector scratched the whiskers under his chin. “Monday. Lemme think. Yeah, I reckon I did. She give me a letter to deliver.”

  “To whom?”

  He guffawed. “Lordy, Judge, you know I don’t read.”

  I knew. Hector had learned to read like other first and second graders, but he gave it up in third grade and flat-out refused to read after that. He’d been the despair of his poor mother, who had been a Latin teacher before she fell in love with a lovely face and discovered, to her despair, there was no character behind it. The only reason Hector had a driver’s license was that Helena went with him when he was sixteen and read him the questions. Hector told the examiner he was having trouble with his eyes jumping that day, and since he’d passed the driving test, she let him get away with it. It would never have worked if the examiner hadn’t been very young and as susceptible as Hector’s mother to a handsome face and what passed for rustic charm.

  “So where did you take the letter?” I asked.

  “Over to Annie Dale Wilson’s, like Bertie told me to. She said leave it where it could be found, so I propped it on the porch rocker. Annie’s done right well for herself,” he added in a meditative tone. “She’n me used to go together, you know. And she’s alone again now.”

  The fact that Hector and Annie had gone around together for a little while when she was in ninth grade was one of those memories I hadn’t brought out and looked at for years. Hector, of course, had already left school—finding nothing there, so he said, he couldn’t live without. He was mighty handsome back then, and Annie Dale was going into her wild phase. Annie Dale’s mama took care of that particular problem by baking an apple pie and sending Annie Dale and her daddy over to Hector’s to deliver it. Annie Dale told me later, “I didn’t know people could live that trashy.” Hector’s mama was dead by then, and Helena wasn’t any fonder of baths and cleaning than her daddy or brothers.

  “Of courses, she’s got real snooty, now,” Hector added, by which I concluded that he must have knocked, but Annie Dale hadn’t answered, invited him in, or given him money. Hector was the world’s most consistent cadger.

  To prove it, he hauled himself up from the chair and said, “Thanks for the co-cola, Judge. I don’t reckon you could give me a little something to tide me over until my next check?”

  We both knew that the only two things Jed refused him were cash and liquor.

  “Sorry, Hubert, I just spent my last dollar bill on your Coke.” I didn’t mention my twenties or tens. “If you think of anything else about Bertie, will you let me know?”

  “I shore will, Judge. Shore will.” At the door he paused. “I already thought of one thing. She could sing real purty. Saw Helena’s old guitar on the wall and asked if she could play it. I told her, ‘You may, but whether you can or not is up to you.’ ” He snickered at his own wit. “Mama used to say that to us kids. She was a school-teacher, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, Bertie could play pretty good. She tuned that thing up and sat there the whole afternoon, plunking out tunes and singing. When we got ready to go, I said, ‘Why don’t you just take it with you?’ I didn’t have no use for it, not being able to play,” he added, in case I made the mistake of thinking he’d gone softhearted.

  He swiped his nose with the back of one hand. “Hubert hadn’t oughta hit her with that pipe. She warn’t hurtin’ nobody, sleepin’ in his barn.”

  17

  “Do you know that he did it?” I demanded. “Did you see him? Did anybody you know?”

  “No, but who else coulda done it? That Hubert’s lost his temper one time too many. Mark my words. They gonna lock him up and throw away the key.” He sounded so virtuous, you’d never guess he’d been locked up a few times himself.

  He donned his filthy hat. “Nice seein’ you, Judge. Be good, youngun.”

  When he’d gone, Tad fanned the air in front of his face. “Phew! How did you stand it?”

  “Didn’t you notice how often I blew my nose? I was breathing into my hand.”

  “You could have handed me a Kleenex,” he muttered. “Are you gonna call the police and tell them to arrest Mr. Spence?” “Not likely.”

  “But everybody knows he did it.”

  “Not everybody, honey. Me, for instance, and I know Hubert real well.”

  Not quite well enough, however. Not well enough to figure out where he was in that half hour he wouldn’t discuss.

  While Joe Riddley was taking Tad to school, I called my old friend Isaac James, the assistant police chief. Ike grew up in Hopemore, held a degree in criminology, and would have been chief if our benighted city council hadn’t preferred to import a white man instead of promoting a qualified black one. Several of them, I am satisfied to report, had lived to regret that decision.

  When we’d exchanged greetings, checked on each other’s families, and agreed that Chief Muggins had been a tad quick to haul Tad down to the juvenile detention center, I asked, “Can you tell me exactly what you all have on Hubert Spence besides the matchbook?”

  Ike liked Hubert, so he didn’t want him arrested any more than I did. “Nothing we can take to a probable-cause hearing yet, fortunately. A search of the barn turned up a few items that indicate the victim was, indeed, camping out in his barn. We have witnesses that Hubert uttered threats against the victim, and other witnesses to a remark he made to you the night of the murder, about taking care of the situation himself. The only tangible evidence we have is a matchbook with his store name on it and a footprint that matches his shoes down at the murder scene. Hubert claims he must have dropped the matchbook and made the footprint when he was down there around five o’clock. Ms. Georgia Tate confirms that she was with him. Her footprint was there, too, and a few threads from a red shirt she was wearing when she went through the hedge. The thing the chief thinks is most significant against Hubert is that he has half an hour unaccounted for after that night’s meeting, which he refuses to talk about. Forensics have narrowed the time of death down to some time between eight and ten, which includes the time when Hubert won’t say where he was.”

  I put forth my theories. “Maybe he wet himself and had to change clothes. Old men do that, you know. Or maybe he had to go home and take some medicine he’d forgotten to bring. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Hubert take his heart medicine in public, but he takes so many pains to hide what he’s doing, I’ve told him somebody’s gonna turn him in for taking drugs. Have you checked to see if he dropped by the house before he went out with the fellows?”

  “We can check. The biggest thing I see against Hubert is that nobody else in town had a problem with the victim. Folks thought she was a man, of course, but we keep finding folks who thought he was a little spacy, but nice. Myrtle says he
never failed to say ‘Thank you’ for a meal, and she was planning to invite him back after he exceeded the limit of meals your church pays for. Hubert’s the only person in town who had a problem with him, so far as we can find.”

  Who was it who said if you eliminate every possibility, the impossible must be true?

  I refused to believe it yet. As soon as I hung up, I called Pooh’s to talk to Otis, Lottie’s husband and Pooh’s yardman. I liked and trusted Otis.

  “Hey, Otis,” I greeted him. “Tell Lottie that pie was outstanding Monday night.”

  “I sure will, Judge. Everybody all right down your way? I heard you got the boy back.”

  “Got him back and he’s doing fine. Listen, I understand the police are real interested in somebody over at your place.”

  “They sure are, and it’s upset everybody. You gonna keep him out of jail?”

  “I’m gonna try. Tell me, did Hubert come back there Monday night after the meeting, while we women were in with Gusta? Did he run in for a few minutes and go upstairs?”

  “No, ma’am, and I was right here in the kitchen the whole time, watching television. If he’d a come, unless he came in the front door where you all were, I’d have seen him.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  I was trying to think what else I could ask and who to ask it of when Joe Riddley came in and sat in his desk chair, ready to check the inventory for the week. “I can’t for the life of me figure out where Hubert might have gone in that half hour Monday night,” I told him.

  He didn’t turn from the computer screen. “You’ve got no reason to figure it out. That’s Charlie’s business, not yours.”

  “Yeah, but could Hubert have stopped by the store for anything?”

  “He could have stopped by a lot of places, including down by the water tank.”

  “You know he didn’t as well as I do. I can’t for the life of me figure out what would be so secret, though.”

  “Me neither. Only thing I ever knew Hubert to be secretive about was money. He’s always been real close about letting folks know what he has.”