Who Invited the Dead Man?

by Sprinkle, Patricia

  She looked at him uncertainly. He grinned down at her and slowly she smiled.

  As I left, I heard him asking, “Do you like athletics?”

  “I like to run. Do you?” After that, I was out of earshot.

  Predictably, Gusta was not pleased. “Ungrateful child! First she moves out and saddles me with a stranger, and now she’s never there when I need her. Don’t put your old-age hopes in your grandchildren, MacLaren. They are sure to disappoint you. And where’s Alice? She ought to be where I can call her if I need her.”

  “I asked her to guard the front door while I came to find you. We’ve had a little accident inside and are having to steer people around to the back.”

  She fixed me with those steel-gray eyes. “It’s not a murder, is it? That sheriff’s man said it was murder.” When I didn’t answer at once, she glared. “MacLaren,” she asked in an accusing tone, “whatever have you done?”

  11

  After the other guests had gone. Darren sat on the front porch steps, the late-afternoon sun setting his hair alight. “I thought I’d stay to help J. R. to bed and give him a good massage. His muscles are sure to be worn out with all the excitement and all that walking. My birthday gift,” he added.

  “Bless you,” I said gratefully. “I think Ridd took him to his room.” I walked him through the kitchen and pointed the way. “Behind the living room, in what used to be our den.” I stayed in the kitchen to pay the workers. Clarinda had marshaled them so well they had already cleaned up every speck of the mess. She’d also put up food for each of them to take home. We waved them on their way, then she turned back to the kitchen. Seeing the slump of her shoulders and the weariness in her face was like seeing myself in a mirror. “We did it,” she said.

  “We sure did,” I agreed, “and it was great.” I fell into a kitchen chair. “But another day like this and I’ll just go crazy and get it over with.”

  Clarinda wiped an invisible spot on the countertop. “The sheriff says we can’t get in there until tomorrer at the earliest. What time you want me here?”

  “I don’t want you here at all. I know you have church all day.”

  She nodded. “Sure do, and Otis is preaching.”

  I was surprised. “Otis Raeburn?”

  “Yeah. He’s real good. Quiet, now—not like some. But when he talks, something tingles deep inside you. You know you’ve heard the word of God for sure.”

  I’d seen Otis all my life driving Pooh around town or shopping for plants, and I’d admired his courtly gentleness, but I’d never guessed he was a preacher. “Life is full of surprises.” I stretched and yawned. “You go on home. I’ll do what has to be done tomorrow. You can finish the rest on Monday.”

  “Get that food out of the house, now. I don’t want this kitchen smelling to high heaven.” We heard the gentle toot of her grandson’s horn in the backyard. Having given me my instructions, Clarinda tugged off the old blue cotton cardigan she wore in the kitchen and headed for the closet next to the back door.

  “That’s locked,” I reminded her, “and the key’s upstairs. I’ll hang it up later.”

  She draped it carefully over a chair back. “Call me, now, if you need me tomorrer.”

  “I won’t need you tomorrow.”

  She turned at the door, and I knew exactly what her next five words would be. “Oh, and one more thing.” She never left without saying that at least once. “I made the police let me go to the livin’ room for all the birthday cards and presents. I took ’em back to the study. Didn’t want the boss takin’ it into his head to go there lookin’ for ’em.”

  The study was our fancy name for the paneled room at the far back of the house, behind the den. Furnished with odds and ends chosen for comfort rather than style, the room was a catchall for things we didn’t know where else to put, and the space Yarbrough men had claimed as their own for four generations. Its desk was scratched and scarred. Its shelves sagged with books we never read but didn’t throw out and National Geographics we couldn’t bear to burn. One corner was filled by the gun cabinet Old Joe Yarbrough had built and Joe Riddley still used to store his guns.

  Clarinda put her hand on the knob to leave. “Cindy took the grandkids home, and the others are back there right now. I told ’em to list the presents so you can write folks later.”

  Tears stung my eyes and made my voice wobbly. “I don’t know how you got this all cleaned up so fast. You did a heroic job today.”

  Her dark face crinkled in a grin. “Me ’n’ you both, huh? More heroic than anybody knows. Workin’ right on with Mr. Hiram lying dead in that other room—” She shook her head and pursed her lips. “Mmm, mmmm mmm! We oughta get medals, for sure.”

  I should have known my sons would have a different opinion.

  As soon as I entered the study, I met three pairs of grownup eyes. Martha’s were apprehensive. The men’s glowered—Joe Riddley’s black eyes in Ridd’s olive face and my own lighter browns in Walker’s fairer one.

  “Okay, Mama,” Walker started. “Tell us what’s going on in the dining room. Buster and Charlie Muggins are both in there with a slew of officers and won’t let us in.”

  Before I said a word I took the basket of cards out of Joe Riddley’s red leather recliner, sat down, and extended the footrest. I laid my head back, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to watch the expressions on their faces. “Hiram Blaine got shot sometime after seven this morning in our dining room. He’s lying behind my Oriental screen with a hole in his head.” I was so tired I could even say it without a tremor. “Charlie found him around three-thirty, but Buster kindly let us plant the tree and have our cake before we sent folks home.”

  “You knew this the whole time we were planting that tree?” Walker was scandalized.

  Ridd had another gripe. “You lied to me, Mama. You flat-out lied to the sheriff’s men and you lied to me.”

  I still didn’t open my eyes. “Yes, son, I did. And I’d do it again to give your daddy that last hour of his party. Since he got shot, have you ever seen him that happy, that alive . . .”

  That last word undid me. Joe Riddley being alive got mixed up with Hiram being dead, and tears started pouring through my closed eyelids until I blubbered like a baby.

  The boys didn’t have a clue what to do. Ridd kept saying, “Now, Mama, it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay,” when we all knew it was never going to be okay for Hiram again, and might never be okay for Joe Riddley, either. Walker kept patting my shoulder like I used to pat his when he was little. Thank goodness Martha is a nurse, and unflappable.

  “You all go home.” She handed me a wad of tissues. “Mac’s plumb worn out, and she’s carried this thing for hours. She and Clarinda. When we were trotting that cake down the steps, Clarinda told me she was proud as punch at the way your mama was bearing up, and here you are fussing at her.”

  I opened my eyes and lifted my head in time to catch Ridd drawing his brows together and frowning at his wife. “You knew about this, too?”

  When Martha nodded, Walker pounded the arm of Joe Riddley’s old leather couch and yelled, “You could have told us. We had a right to know.”

  His yell brought Ridd to his senses. He reached out and shook Walker’s shoulder like he used to when he was eight and Walker three. “Cool it, bro, or Daddy will hear. If the women made sure the old man had a good time, I guess the least we can do is act grateful. Stop crying, Mama, we aren’t gonna fuss anymore. But if you get involved in trying to solve this thing—”

  “Yes?” I jerked a tissue from a nearby box to rub my eyes. “Just what will you do?”

  He stopped to think. “I guess the same thing you’d have done if we’d ever made you carry out that threat when we were little.”

  “What would you have done?” Walker sounded genuinely curious.

  I shook my head and sniffed. “I don’t know, but it would have been terrible.” We all had a little laugh to clear the soggy air. “But don’t worry,”
I added. “These days I’m too tired and busy to investigate anything. We’ll leave this to Buster. You all go home—you, too, Martha.”

  After they left, I sat remembering the good parts of the day—until a howl from the dog pen reminded me that my day wasn’t quite over. Lulu had become quite the little princess since she lost her leg, and wouldn’t sleep outside anymore. No dog can match a beagle for outrage. “In a minute,” I muttered. I couldn’t move quite yet.

  Lazily my eyes roamed the bookshelves and stopped with a pang at the very top shelf. I’d forgotten we had those five old books of Helena Blaine’s. She gave them to us back when she first learned she was dying, to keep for Jed. “Give them to him when he turns twenty-one,” she’d said. “If they stay at our place, Hector will use them to light the fire or Hiram will tear out pages to line his bird cage. Remember, now, give them to Jed on his birthday.”

  It was a pitiful little legacy, but we’d promised. Then Jed worked in Atlanta the summer he turned twenty-one, and didn’t come back to Hopemore after that, and I plumb forgot the books. I’d need to remember to give them to him when he came for Hiram’s funeral, but I was too tired right then to climb up. . . .

  “Everybody else gone?”

  I must have dozed, because Darren startled me, coming in with his soft fluid stride. He perched on a straight chair, hands dangling between his knees. His dark, dark eyes glistened in the dim room. “J. R. is sleeping. He may wake up wanting a bite of supper later, but let him sleep as long as he will. I gave his muscles a real good workout and you know what? His legs feel stronger. All that showing off today was good for him.”

  “I’m so glad. Thank you for his massage. Would you like to take some barbeque home with you?” I swung my feet off the recliner.

  He grinned. “Don’t want any barbeque, but I wouldn’t say no to another piece of cake.”

  “The red devil cake is all gone. Some pig kept eating it. Will chocolate pound cake do?”

  “It’ll do fine.”

  While I was cutting cake and pouring iced tea, Darren roamed the kitchen. He touched my herbs in the windowsill and Joe Riddley’s grandmama’s old iron sitting up on the hutch. Finally he leaned against the closet door, hands behind him, and said, “How come you haven’t told me about Alice before? She said she moved to town a month ago from Macon to work for Mrs. Wainwright, and you never mentioned her.” His outrage was as keen as Lulu’s.

  “Sorry. I fell down on the job.” I set a big slab of cake before him.

  He sat down and hooked one ankle around the bottom rung of his chair. “And is the tall blonde the rich lady who moved into her daddy’s house after he died?”

  Darren once told me physical therapists are a bit like hairdressers: People gossip in front of them like they are mannequins. I wasn’t surprised he knew about Meriwether’s house.

  “She’s the one. She’s Gusta Wainwright’s granddaughter.”

  “She’s looks overworked,” Darren said thoughtfully. I thought he meant Meriwether until he added, “Think she ever gets time off?”

  I sipped tea before I replied, “I thought your heart was broken by that girl in Dublin.”

  He gave me an impish grin. “It could be mended by the right company. Wonder what she looks like with her hair down?”

  “Better,” I assured him. We sat in companionable silence enjoying our cake until Buster spoke from the door.

  Our kitchen once had a fireplace in it, and the chimney wall sticks out so far it keeps anybody at the door from seeing all the way in. Because Darren was sitting at the far side of the table, Buster couldn’t see him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said, flat-out, “We’re taking the body out now, but of course that room’s got to stay sealed a while.”

  Darren shifted slightly, like he wished he could disappear. But before I could tell them he was there, Charlie spoke from behind Buster’s shoulder. “You ought to move out until we’re done here.”

  “I can’t move Joe Riddley right how, he’s—”

  Buster held up one hand. “No need to move out. We’ve put a seal on the room. I know you’ll honor it.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I hope you hurry. The food on the table’s going to get pretty ripe.”

  “It looks pretty straightforward. He was shot right there with a twenty-two caliber gun. The mail beneath him stopped the bullet.”

  “Best use I can think of for junk mail,” I said sourly.

  A smile flitted over Buster’s face. “No sign of a weapon yet, though. We’ll search again tomorrow, and finish up in there. You want me to leave somebody out here with you?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not scared. We’ve got the dogs.”

  Charlie Muggins piped up again. “You can’t think of anybody around here with a motive, can you?”

  “I hope by ‘around here’ you mean around the whole county, and not around this property,” I said tartly.

  Charlie shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “No, I can’t. Hiram’s been gone four years, after all, and hardly been back long enough to rile anybody up that much.”

  “We want to take a look at Joe Riddley’s guns.” Charlie was practically salivating.

  “Might as well.” I struggled to my feet—neither of which was happy to be in use again after being overworked all day. Carelessly I flapped my hand toward Darren on his concealed chair. “You both know Darren, don’t you?” Both men deserved the shock they got when they came into the room and saw him sitting there. They should never have spoken from the door.

  The gun case in the den was locked, as usual, but up in the top right corner, one gun was missing.

  “What was that one?” Charlie demanded, pressing far too close behind me.

  “I don’t know. I hate guns, hate having them in the house.”

  “But what kind was it?” Charlie persisted. “You gotta at least know that.”

  “I don’t. The guns are Joe Riddley’s. I leave them alone.”

  His voice was shrill. “You mean to tell me you live in this house and you don’t—”

  “What’s goin’ on in here?” Joe Riddley’s voice was slurred with sleep, and he practically hung on his walker. Darren moved to him and supported him with one strong arm.

  “We’re admiring your guns, old buddy,” Buster told him. “There seems to be one missing. Know which one it was?”

  Joe Riddley shuffled over and peered into the case. After a long minute’s thought, he nodded, as if he’d come up with a satisfactory answer. “It’s not missing, just mislaid.”

  “It was a small gun, wasn’t it?” Charlie prodded.

  Joe Riddley stared at him half a minute without saying a word, then nodded again. “Still is, far’s I know. Guns don’t generally grow.” He turned back to Buster. “Quail huntin’ season starts in a few weeks.” Sometimes the things he remembered were more amazing than the things he forgot.

  “Next month,” Buster confirmed.

  “Let’s go. You and me, like we used to. I could do with some quail. You want some quail, Little Bit? Go write ‘hunt with Buster’ in my log for next Saturday.”

  I cleared my throat to be sure my voice was steady. “Not this fall, honey. Maybe next year. I’m not sure you’re up to shooting yet.”

  “I’m plenty up to shooting! You hear me? Plenty up to shooting. I can outshoot anybody here. You know that. Buster, tell her! I don’t ever miss. Don’t you tell me I can’t go hunting, Little Bit. Don’t you tell me . . .” He broke down and sobbed.

  Darren put one arm across his back and practically carried Joe Riddley down the hall to bed. I stood there with my mouth dry and my heart pounding. Charlie rubbed one stubby forefinger along his chimpanzee jaw.

  I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “Joe Riddley was asleep this morning,” I reminded him. “He gets confused, doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  He nodded. “Might not know what he was doin,’ either.” He turned to Buster. “Way I see it, Mac here could have killed Hiram b
efore the party and shoved him behind that screen with the rest of her cluttered life, or Joe Riddley killed Hiram in one of those new rages he’s gotten prone to since his accident.”

  I rounded on him, furious. “Joe Riddley didn’t have an accident, he was deliberately shot. And if you repeat what you just said in a public place, I’ll have you in court for—”

  Buster put out a hand to shut me up, but his other hand was making circles along his temple, a sign he was thinking. “We need to call it a night and all get some rest. Want me to bring Lulu up to the house, Mac?”

  “I’d be grateful.”