Her mutters were a familiar background as I settled comfortably against one end of the couch with my feet propped on a pillow and turned to chapter one. Clarinda moved around in the back of the house, putting away things on various closet shelves.
I was in the middle of chapter two when the doorbell rang. By the time I’d realized I hadn’t warned Clarinda not to let anybody in, she was already opening the door.
“The judge is a bit incapacitated,” she greeted the visitor, “but come on in. I know she’ll be glad of company.”
Renée came in with that combination of big-boned awkwardness and grace that made you want to keep looking at her. She was spectacular in gold linen pants and a white silk shell with a gold disk hanging from a chain around her neck. “I’m sorry to bother you, but Lance wanted me to bring you something.”
Reluctantly, I closed my book and set it on the coffee table. Renée started fumbling in her huge purse. Clarinda paused on her way back to the guest room. “You all want some tea and cookies?”
“Oh, no,” Renée assured her. “I’m fine.” She waited until Clarinda trudged away, then repeated, “Lance wanted me to give you these.” She held out two old photographs. “Abigail had them in her briefcase. She showed this one to Lance earlier this week and told him she’d looked for it as soon as she knew we were coming to Hopemore, in case you still lived here. Lance didn’t think you’d want the police to find it, so he went to get it while Burlin was talking to the chief.” She handed me one of the pictures.
I couldn’t help smiling as I saw what it was. It had been taken at the Bullocks’ lake house that fall weekend years ago. Binky was on Burlin’s back with her chin propped on one of his shoulders. I stood behind him on a rock with my chin propped on his other shoulder, creating a three-headed monster. We were all making ferocious faces.
My eyes stung. Had any of us ever been that young?
“Abigail told Lance she was just a child when you met,” Renée broke into my thoughts, “but you talked to her like she was a real person. She never forgot that.”
I wanted to go somewhere and cry a river. “Poor Binky. She probably didn’t get talked to much at all. Her family was so—I don’t know, involved in things. Politics, society, sports. That whole weekend, I kept wishing I could bring that little girl home with me to our farm for a week or two, so she could just be herself.”
“She never was.” Renée’s smile looked as sad as mine felt. “She gave her whole life to Lance after his mother left, and everybody took that for granted—including Lance. When I came into the family, I expected her to resent me, but instead, she saw me as a sort of ally: Abigail and Renée against Burlin, Georgia, and Edward—all of whom are determined to make Lance into something he’s not.”
“Governor?”
“Anything political. The only good thing this mess has accomplished is that maybe he can go back to his drawing board and I can go back to my clients. But I’m going to miss Abigail.”
“Me, too, and I hardly knew her.”
“Lance also found this with the other picture, and we don’t know where she got it. We’re terribly afraid—” She handed it to me, her eyes anxious.
I held it carefully by the edges. “Lance will want to have it eventually.”
She nodded. “He doesn’t have many pictures of himself with his mother, and this one is particularly nice. But it didn’t come from any of their family albums.”
“My grandson, the one who stayed with Sperra a few days, said she had some pictures. I’d guess this was one of them. He may recognize it.”
“But how did Abigail get it, unless—” She broke off, turned away, and said thickly, “Lance said would you keep it for him, please? Just for now?”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. This is evidence in a murder case. You both know that—which is why I guess Lance made sure it had your prints and his all over it, and wanted me to put mine on it, as well. Clarinda?”
When she poked her head around the doorframe, I said, “Bring me a sandwich bag, please.” I had her hold it open while I dropped the picture inside, then I sealed it and handed it back to Renée. “Take that to the police, or you could face a charge of obstructing justice.”
She slid it into her purse with a glum look on her face, then held out one long slim hand. “I don’t know if we’ll ever meet again, but I want to thank you for being a sane island in the middle of this crazy mess.” She spoke quickly and almost ran out the door.
I heard Clarinda rumbling in the kitchen. “What are you doing now?” I called.
“Fixing to finish up in that guest room. That’ll take most of the afternoon. Then I aim to switch a few things around in here again. There’s stuff still not sitting right on the shelves. It’s too crowded, like.” She hummed as she pulled down who knew what and thumped it on the countertop. In a minute or two, I heard a crash.
“Ah! Now I see the method in your madness. If you keep rearranging things, you’ll break enough so the rest will fit.”
She didn’t reply, but in a minute I heard co-cola fizzing over ice. She brought me a glass and glared at me as she set it down. “You are too mean for anybody else to work for. You know that, don’t you? I just stay because I feel sorry for Joe Riddley.”
“And because nobody else will hire you.”
“You wish.” She stomped back down the hall.
I settled back with my book, wishing I’d bought a paperback. I didn’t mind the price—I figured I was contributing to the college fund for the writer’s children—but hardback books are so heavy to hold.
I forgot that by chapter four, when it got really exciting.
But as I looked nervously about to make sure no villains were lurking in the living room, I remembered something I ought to have thought of sooner: Renée had left the front door unlocked.
26
I was opening my mouth to call Clarinda when the knob turned.
“Hello, Mackie. Sorry to just barge in, but I feel like family by now.”
Georgia was still dressed in black. I supposed she had put on her silver slippers for Chief Muggins, and was carrying the matching black-and-silver bag for the sake of her public, but nobody who saw her right then would have thought “fashionable.” Words that came to mind were “grief stricken” and “haggard.” Her eyes were great gray holes in her face. Her shoulders sagged.
“Are you all right?” I greeted her with concern. “I nearly lost my brother a year ago, so I know a bit how you feel.”
She sank into the chair across from me and sighed. “I hate to keep coming to cry on your shoulder, but I can’t stand it over at Annie Dale’s anymore.”
“You’ve been through an awful lot in one week. How did the press conference go?”
“We couldn’t face it. Edward just read a statement to the reporters.” She sniffed and held her fingers delicately to her nose. “All I can think about is Abigail, wondering if there was anything I could have done. If I’d gone in to talk to her this morning instead of coming over here, or if I hadn’t gone walking with Hubert—she liked him, you know. But that walk didn’t mean anything. She was washing her hair and he asked me . . .”
“I miss Binky,” I told her. “She was a special child, and a special woman.”
Georgia nodded, and a tear fell onto her clasped hands. “She was my baby sister.” Her voice was a whisper. “I can’t believe she’s dead.” She reached for a tissue from the box on the coffee table and buried her face in it.
When she opened her pocketbook, I thought she was tidying away the tissue. Silly me. I never expected a gun that small.
From where I sat, all I could see was a little silver ring with a black hole in the middle. It wasn’t the ring I had to worry about, though. It was that hole. Not that a bullet that small would be likely to kill me. She’d have to use two or more, and I’d probably bleed to death in the end. Still, I’m as opposed to a slow lingering death as to a quick one, and I have little tolerance for pain.
D
eep in my head, a chant began: “Please, God, please, God.” It’s the prayer I do best.
Georgia spoke so low, I almost couldn’t hear. “Abigail said you could solve the murder. I didn’t believe her, fool that I am. You never seemed that clever. But the way you looked at me this morning—you already knew, didn’t you?”
“No,” I protested—which was true. I hadn’t known until later.
She leveled the gun at me. “Don’t try to lie. I saw your face when I walked in that door just now. It’s a good thing you didn’t marry Burlin. A politician’s wife has to control her face, and yours is like a book. Anybody can read it.”
If so, right that minute she was reading that I’d rather be anywhere else in the world than in that particular room with her and her violent little toy. I wanted to promise her that I’d never tell anybody, that she could go back to Atlanta and live a long and happy life. I wanted to scream the house down so Clarinda would come—
It was thinking about Clarinda that calmed me down. Whatever happened to me, I wanted to try and make sure she got away. “You’re talking nonsense, Georgia. Go back to Annie Dale’s.”
“Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You know what I did.” She got up and went to the front window, peered out through the blinds. “But I want to know what I did wrong. How did you figure it out?”
I wished I’d had SWAT-team training in talking my way out of situations. I’ve never understood that concept, personally. Why would anybody with a gun stand around talking when they could be shooting? Still, Georgia hadn’t pulled the trigger, and Joe Riddley has been heard to say I can talk the comb off a rooster. This was as good a time as any to try.
“Well, for one thing, you told me Hubert took you down to the water tank, and you suggested he was making sure if they found evidence at the scene to incriminate him, he could claim it was from that earlier visit. What you didn’t realize is that I’ve known Hubert all his life. He’s not that clever. But you are. You were the one making sure any evidence they found could have been left on that previous visit.”
She turned. “If you’re so smart, how did I know Sperra was in town?”
“You read Lance’s note. You were the only one who could have. He said he put it among his papers during the meeting. Burlin told us during his speech that he, Edward, and Lance were golfing that afternoon, Binky went bike riding, and you and Renée were napping. But you informed us all you were writing thank-you notes, remember? Burlin told me earlier that you all used the sitting room for meetings and writing thank-you notes.”
Georgia looked like she had forgotten how to breathe.
“So you were alone in that room, knowing Lance had hidden a note in his speech. Of course you looked to see what was so secret. After you read it, you knew Sperra was alive, in town, and hoping to meet Lance at the water tank that night. What you didn’t know was how Lance would respond to the resurrection of his mother.”
“A drunk!” She spat the words over her shoulder.
“A homeless drunk. That’s what you called her this morning. You said, ‘To get this close—this close to the governor’s mansion and lose it because of a homeless drunk.’ That’s all Sperra was to you, wasn’t she? A homeless drunk. Not a musician. Not a woman. Not a mother or a wife or even a human being. A homeless drunk who stood in the path of the Bullocks’ march to the governor’s mansion and eventually to the White House. Your daddy told me years ago that it was just a matter of time before a Bullock occupied the oval office. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t, was he? It’s been the family game plan for generations. Binky wasn’t the loose cannon aimed at the plan. It was Lance.”
She shrugged. “He isn’t as focused as the rest of us—”
“And he’s kind. From what I’ve seen of him, he would take a drunk homeless mother home and install her in his guest room. That’s hard to do in the governor’s mansion.”
She didn’t reply.
I said thoughtfully, “I can understand your wanting Lance to be governor, but it’s hard to forgive your using Hubert. It was tacky to persuade him to take you on that walk by pretending you needed to stretch your legs after sitting so long and to gently steer him toward the water tank where you could leave a clear footprint.”
Georgia’s voice was icy and she still didn’t turn. “Have you forgotten I was with Renée the whole time after the meeting, until I joined you all at Gusta’s?”
“Not quite the whole time. You went up to change your shoes—muddy shoes, the ones you have on now, the ones you showed us after the meeting. You did change them, but only after you killed Sperra. That way, if forensics tested them and discovered mud on them from under the water tank—”
“I was gone ten minutes!” she blazed “Ten minutes. Think about it. I had to go up the stairs and stop by the bathroom for a tinkle—you know how unreliable bladders are at our age. I had to find my other shoes, put them on, and get back downstairs. If you can do all that in ten minutes plus run from Annie Dale’s to the water tank and back—not to mention killing somebody while you are there—more power to you. I’m fit, but I’m not in that good a shape.”
“Me, neither,” I agreed. “But both you and Burlin mentioned that Renée has no sense of time. Besides, she was jet-lagged, dozing anytime she could. I think what really happened was this: You went in the front door of Annie Dale’s and straight out the back. You knew Annie Dale was at her mother-in-law’s, the men were still at the meeting, and Binky was up in the sitting room, working. You ran the short block to the water tank, surprised Sperra, and killed her. I doubt if you even spoke to her, so it wouldn’t have taken long. You ran back to the house, up the stairs, and changed your shoes. Maybe you even stopped for that tinkle, and fixed your face. I noticed your lipstick was fresh but you were breathless when you got to Gusta’s.”
“Fixing my face takes time,” she reminded me.
“Not much time for a person in the public eye. You’re used to doing it on the run. That night, I think you ran down to the car, changed the dashboard clock, and woke Renée to verify the time. You’d told her you wouldn’t be a minute. Now, you impressed on her that it hadn’t been but ten. She sleepily agreed, and dozed again. You drove around a few minutes, changed the clock back to the right time, woke her, told her you’d been lost twenty minutes, and let her help you find Gusta’s. It a stroke of luck for you that Gusta’s clock is ten minutes slow. That made it very believable that it had only been half an hour since we left you at the community center. But you made two mistakes. It was still light enough then to see, so you went through Sperra’s knapsack to make sure there was nothing to identify who she was. You found a picture of her with Lance and brought it back. Binky saw you with that picture, didn’t she? Hearing you in the hall, did she come to the door? And when did she take the picture—after she heard that the murdered woman was Sperra?”
“How do you know about the picture?”
“It turned up in her briefcase this morning.”
“So maybe Binky murdered Sperra. Had you thought of that?”
I thought about pretending to believe it, but I knew Georgia was right about my face. I’ve always been a lousy actor. So I might as well let her have the whole story. “Even if you kill me, you aren’t going to get away. The police have some evidence you forgot about.”
“What?”
“What were you wearing that night?”
“A red pantsuit. You saw me.”
“But earlier that day, you were wearing navy. I saw you in the morning, too, dressed for Dublin and you said earlier you went home from the walk to shower and change for the meeting. Even if you kill me, Hubert will probably remember what you were wearing on the walk. He’s always had an eye for women’s clothes. And the others will remember you changing. What if I told you that one piece of evidence they found on the bushes was bits of red thread? Before you went walking with Hubert, you remembered to put on the shoes you planned to wear that night, but you didn’t know about the bushes.”
> “Those damned bushes!” She seemed to crumple.
Odd as it sounds, I pitied her for a moment. I felt like I was watching something fragile and lovely collapse in on itself. “They scratched me up, too,” I said. “I plan to ask the city to cut them back and shape them up in the next week or two.”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that.” She leveled the gun at me again.
PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod!
No angel swooped down to take away the gun, so I kept talking. “Did you kill Binky, too? Did she see you coming back Monday night, and once she learned the dead woman was Sperra, ask where you had been?” Georgia’s hand wavered. I plowed on. “Did you kill her to keep her quiet, or did she prefer to kill herself rather than give evidence against you? It’s even possible that she couldn’t stand to live with you taking every man who ever looked her way. I figure that was what the note was about. It certainly wasn’t a suicide note from a woman who made her living writing letters. But it doesn’t really matter whether Binky killed herself or you killed her. You can’t be executed twice.”
“Or three times,” she reminded me grimly.
In the kitchen, Clarinda slammed a cabinet door. We both jumped, and Georgia gave her watch a puzzled look. “Who’s that? Burlin said your maid leaves at two.”
“We’ve been unpacking boxes, and she decided to stay late.”
She walked closer and whispered, “Send her home. We don’t need her here.”
“Clarinda?” My voice shook a bit, but it’s hard to control body parts when they’ve got a gun pointed at them. Especially when the woman holding it is shaking from head to painted toenails. “It’s past time for you to leave. Go on, now.”
Clarinda stomped in, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “I told you, I’ll go when I get done. You all need something to drink?” She’d heard the visitor. She hadn’t seen the gun.
I tried to silently beg Georgia to let her go, but Georgia had already motioned with her head, keeping the gun out of sight. “Sit on the couch, next to Judge Yarbrough.”
Clarinda raised one eyebrow. “Folks in this house want something from me, they say please.”
When Will the Dead Lady Sing? Page 24
